The Indian women’s team’s journey in the ICC T20 Women’s World Cup ended with a narrow 5-run loss against the Australia women’s team in the semi-finals. This time, before the start of the T20 World Cup, everyone expected the women’s team to be one of the strong contenders to win the cup, but after that, everyone was disappointed with the kind of performance the team showed on the field.
In this T20 World Cup, the Indian team got a place in Group-B, in which the team made its journey with the match against Pakistan. In this match, the team hit a target of 150 runs, which they achieved by losing 3 wickets and recorded a resounding victory. Jemima Rodrigues scored an unbeaten 53 in this match for the Indian team, while youngster Richa Ghosh played a brilliant 31 not out innings from 20 balls.
Following this, the Indian women’s team played their second match against the West Indies women’s team. This match saw the excellent performance on the ball by Deepti Sharma who took 3 wickets and the Indian team got the target of just 119 runs from 20 overs, which they achieved in 18.1 overs with the loss of 4 wickets. Richa Ghosh also impressed everyone with her performance in this match, scoring an unbeaten 44 from 32 balls.
The Indian women’s team played their third game in this T20 World Cup against the strong England women’s team. In this match, the England team, batting first, managed to score 151 runs with the loss of 7 wickets in 20 overs. In India bowling, Renuka Singh took 5 wickets in 4 overs with 15 runs to her name.
Chasing the target, the Indian women’s team kept losing wickets at regular intervals, but despite this, Smriti Mandhana’s 52 while Richa Ghosh’s unbeaten 47 played an innings but it proved insufficient to save the team from a 1-2 defeat. 11 races. .
In Group-B, the Indian team played its last match against Ireland. Batting first in this match, the India team managed to reach the score of 155 runs with the loss of 6 wickets in 20 overs with the help of brilliant 87-run innings from Smriti Mandhana. When the Ireland team came down to chase the goal in this match, they had scored 54 runs for 2 wickets in 8.2 overs, but at the same time the match had to be stopped due to rain. Following this, according to the Duckworth-Lewis rule, the Indian women’s team was declared the winner by 5 runs in this match.
Everyone expected a better performance from the Indian women’s team in the semi-final against Australia. In this important match the Kangaroo team, batting first, made a grand score of 172 runs with the loss of 4 wickets. After this the start of the Indian team chasing the goal was also not good and the team had lost their 3 important wickets to the score of 28.
From here, captain Harmanpreet Kaur and Jemima Rodrigues not only started scoring runs at a brisk pace, but also made the Indian team completely heavy in this match. At one point it looked as if the India team could win this match but first Jemima 43 runs and then Harmanpreet returned to the pavilion after scoring 52 runs at a crucial moment, a huge blow to the Indian team’s victory hopes. and the team had to face a close 5-run loss in the match.
Talking about the performance of the important players of the Indian team in this World T20, the captain Harmanpreet Kaur managed to score just 118 runs in 5 innings at an average of 23.60, in which 1 innings half century was seen with her bat. As she was talking about Smriti Mandhana’s performance, she batted in 4 innings and scored 151 runs at an average of 37.75, including 2 half-century innings.
Apart from this, Jemima Rodrigues scored 129 runs in 5 innings at an average of 32.25. On the other hand, the player who impressed the most with her performance from the Indian team was the goalkeeper batsman Richa Ghosh, who scored 136 runs in 5 innings at an average of 68 and during this period her strike rate was 130.77.
If we look at the performance of India team bowlers in this T20 World Cup, Renuka Singh took the most wickets on their behalf, who took a total of 7 wickets in 5 matches with an average of 16. Other than this , Deepti Sharma took 6 wickets while Shikha Pandey took 3 wickets.
During this T20 World Cup, the Indian players also worked towards some major records, in which captain Harmanpreet Kaur became the first Indian cricketer to have over 3000 T20 international runs to her name. On the other hand, Deepti Sharma became the first player among the Indian male and female cricketers to complete the feat of taking 100 wickets in the international T20 format.