India registered a terrific 82-run victory in the third match of their Women’s T20 World Cup campaign. Not only did India need to secure the points, they also needed to do so in an emphatic fashion to recover their poor net run-rate insofar.
India now find themselves on 4 points ahead of Pakistan and New Zealand, and recovered their NRR all the way to being ahead of Pakistan. India now sit on 0.58, while Pakistan are on 0.56, and the Kiwis are all the way back on -0.050 after their big opening win against India was nullified by a slightly bigger loss to Australia.
However, India are still not guaranteed qualification to the semifinals, due to the extra matches in hand possessed by New Zealand and Pakistan, having only played two matches apiece so far.
New Zealand in particular are a threat: with Australia and India out of the way, the White Ferns will back themselves to generate results against Pakistan and a hapless Sri Lanka.
This would put the Kiwis on 6 points, ahead of India, with the women still due to play the machine that is Australia’s white-ball team, who are the defending champions and are gunning for a seventh T20 World Cup trophy.
In short, this means India will need one of their Asian neighbours to do them a favour by beating New Zealand, so that India’s match against Australia doesn’t become a fight for survival.
Equally, if Pakistan do beat New Zealand, India will need an Australian win to keep the women in green away from the top two slots as well.
None of this will be an issue if India succeed in beating Australia, in which case New Zealand will need a big NRR swing themselves in both of their matches to match India on 8 points. However, Australia are faraway favourites, and India won’t want it to come down to that.
Here are the remaining fixtures in Group A at the T20 Women’s World Cup:
Australia vs Pakistan, 11 October
New Zealand vs Sri Lanka: 12 October
India vs Australia: 13 October
New Zealand vs Pakistan: 14 October
In the match against Sri Lanka, Smriti Mandhana finally came good with bat as she struck a classy half-century in difficult conditions. Harmanpreet Kaur played a captain’s knock, registering her fastest T20I half-century as a barrage at the death pushed India’s score to 172/3.
In response, Sri Lanka lost three wickets in the first three overs, and were never in contention following that. They nearly survived the 20 overs, but were ultimately bowled out for 90, with Arundhati Reddy and Asha Sobhana taking three wickets each.
