The Indian women’s cricket team came close to making history at the ongoing 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. With two overs remaining in the final match of women’s cricket, India’s victory seemed almost certain. Chasing a target of 162 runs, the Indian team had to score 17 runs to win in the last two overs and had 4 wickets left. From here Australian bowlers Megan Schutt and Jonasson gave up just 7 runs in the last two overs and took all four wickets. The Indian women’s cricket team lost here by 9 runs and with this they missed out on making history by winning the gold medal on their debut.
This was not the first time that Australia had robbed the Indian team of a chance to make history. Even before this, she has twice been an obstacle in the way of achieving a great achievement by the Indian women’s team. Once defeated India in the final of the ODI World Cup. At the same time, defeat in the T20 World Cup final for the second time prevented India from becoming the champion. The Indian team has failed to become world champions in these two formats of cricket till date.
In the 2005 ODI World Cup, the Indian team reached the final. In this match, Australia won the toss and chose to bat first. Thanks to Karen Rolton’s century and Lisa Sthalekar’s half-century, the Australian team scored 215 runs for the loss of 4 wickets in 50 overs. In response, the Indian team only made 117 runs. Veteran batsmen like captain Mithali Raj and Anjum Chopra failed completely in this match.
In the T20 World Cup held in the year 2020, the Indian team also entered the final. In this match too, Australia won the toss and chose to bat first and scored 184 runs from 20 overs thanks to half a century from Alyssa Healy (75) and Beth Mooney (78). In response, the Indian team could not even reach 100 races. Star batsmen like Shafali Verma (2), Smriti Mandhana (11) and Harmanpreet Kaur (4) couldn’t get any runs early on. In this match, Megan Shut took 4 wickets and Jess Jonasson had spoiled India’s game by taking 3 wickets.
