Smriti Mandhana, the acting captain of the Indian women’s cricket team commented positively about the performance of middle order batsman in Women’s Asia Cup group match played on Tuesday against Nepal.
Since India was leading comfortably in the group stage match and Harmanpreet Kaur was not playing, Mandhana decided to reposition the batting order giving some game time to middle-order batters.
Mandhana who is usually an opener did not open as Verma (81) and Hemalatha (47) were given a chance. In 14 overs, they made a foundation run at a solid 122 runs partnership.
S Sajana (10), Jemmimah Rodrigues (28) and others combined to contribute an aggregate of 178/3 while Nepal could only manage 96/9 resulting into an 82-run defeat for them in their allocated twenty overs innings.
Mandhana expressed her delight at giving several opportunities to the middle-order batsmen who had limited chances in previous matches and also during the recently concluded South Africa series.
“As an opener, you don’t get much games without batting. So all other batters needed it. The middle order hasn’t batted in the previous games. It is different condition and always good to have game time under your belt. Also because middle order didn’t get time in the South Africa series,” she said during post-match presentation.
Though India convincingly beat Bangladesh away from home recently, Mandhana warned against complacency demanding that every opponent should be treated with equal seriousness before facing them.
“Not this tournament but even for like last five-six months since WPL ended there are lot of fine tuning needs to be done and we need to keep improving because you cannot go into a World Cup under prepared. You don’t take any team lightly(in semis), we have two days rest before practice and go out there,” she added.
Shafali Verma who scored 81 runs off just 48 balls and was declared player of the match said that consistency is due to believing in her strengths and executing plans well.
“Double hundred is big for any batter and I got plenty of confidence from that innings, I wasn’t in good form before that but the innings helped me get back my confidence,” Shafali stated.
Indu Barma, Nepal’s captain had great pride of her team’s performance and accepted that they learned a lot from playing against India and Pakistan.
“I am proud of my team. We realized how weak we were, so we will come back stronger. It was a great exposure to play against India. I am happy with my team, after 10 overs the bowlers got good momentum and restricted them to below 200. We got good experience from this tournament by playing against India and Pakistan. We made some good memories,” she said.
Barma also praised her side’s bowling effort as they managed to restrict India below 200 runs after the 10-over mark. Her other comments hinted at what it meant for the country’s women cricketers when they played against a strong opponent like India including Pakistan.
