India up against formidable Australia

Navi Mumbai: With one half of India’s most-successful opening pair in women’s ODIs, Pratika Rawal, ruled out of the ICC Women’s World Cup knock outs due to injury, hosts India have an arduous task on hand.

With a mixed bag of results leading to the semifinals, Harmanpreet Kaur & Co will have to lift themselves up and put up a strong show akin to the one against New Zealand last Thursday at the same venue, DY Patil Stadium, if they have to go past defending champions Australia on Thursday. 

It was India, who handed Australia their last 50-over World Cup defeat in the 2017 semifinals in England, courtesy Kaur’s brilliant unbeaten 171. Since then, Australia have been on a 15-game winning streak in World Cups, bagging the 2022 title and remaining undefeated in this edition.

In the absence of Rawal, India will depend a lot on their highest run-getter in this World Cup, Smriti Mandhana (365 runs), and hope for skipper Kaur to come good in the all-important semifinal.

While Mandhana has been in form not only in this World Cup but also in this calendar year, being the only woman to cross 1,000 runs, the same cannot be said of Kaur. Barring her 70 against England in Indore, Kaur has not crossed 22 in the other five innings. India will look for a repeat of what Kaur did against the Aussies eight years ago.

Without Rawal (second highest run-maker with 308 runs at the end of league stage), Shafali Verma, whose place Rawal took in the WODIs late last year, will most likely open with Mandhana in the semifinal. It’d be a like-for-like replacement with the right-handed Shafali also being an aggressive batter who can make the most of the Power Play fielding restrictions.

“What happened to Pratika was unfortunate. No one wants a sportsperson to have such an injury. But God has sent me here to do something special,” said Shafali on Wednesday.

The 21-year-old from Haryana added that straightaway joining the team ahead of the semifinal was not an issue. “I have played in World Cup semifinals before. I count on my experience of playing against Australia before.”

At a venue where India have played two matches in the last week and found it to be a batting beauty, the hosts would like to believe they have an edge.

But Australia know how to win World Cups, having clinched seven titles in 12 previous editions. India will rely on the trio of off-spinners Deepti Sharma, joint highest wicket-taker (15 scalps), Sneh Rana and left-armer Sree Charani to contain the Australians.

In their previous clash in the league stage, Australia made a world record successful chase in WODIs, courtesy captain Alyssa Healy’s first of two back-to-back hundreds. Healy rested herself for the last two league matches due to a minor calf injury and will be raring to go and hoping to record a hat-trick of hundreds.

Australia have shown they enough ammunition in their ranks to extract the team from precarious positions. Beth Mooney’s 109 against Pakistan after being 76 for seven helped her team win by107 runs. Against England, Australia were 65/5 chasing 245 before Ashleigh Gardner’s second hundred of the tournament saw Australia win with 9.3 overs to spare and without losing any further wicket.

On the bowling front, Australia have a world-class leg-spinner in Alana King. King picked up 7/18 against South Africa in the last league match – the best bowling figures in Women’s World Cup and also by an Aussie. Her 13 wickets are next only to medium-pacer and team-mate Anna Sutherland and India’s Deepti (15 each) and England’s Sophie Ecclestone (16).

Teams (from): INDIA: Harmanpreet Kaur (Capt), Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Harleen Deol, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh (WK), Deepti Sharma, Sneh Rana, Amanjot Kaur, Radha Yadav, Sree Charani, Uma Chetry, Kranti Gaud, Arundhati Reddy and Renuka Thakur.

AUSTRALIA: Alyssa Healy (Capt & WK), Phoebe Litchfield, Georgia Voll, Ashleigh Gardner, Tahlia McGrath, Elysse Perry, Sophie Molineux, Kim Garth, Alana King, Annabel Sutherland, Heather Graham, Beth Mooney, Darcie Brown, Megan Schutt and Georgia Wareham.