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Women T20 WC: Australia Beat India

  • By Thetripurapost Desk, Sharjah
  • Oct 13, 2024
  • 352

Team India's hopes of reaching the semi-finals of the Women's T20 World Cup 2024 are almost over. In their last do-or-die match of the league stage, Team India needed a win over defending champions Australia but they failed in it. In this match played in Sharjah, despite the fighting innings of captain Harmanpreet Kaur (54 not out), Team India had to face defeat by 9 runs. This defeat almost ended Team India's hopes. Now all the hopes of Team India are pinned on neighboring country Pakistan, which has to face New Zealand in the last match. If Pakistan upsets Pakistan here and defeats them, then Team India will reach the semi-finals.

The Australian team played this match without their star captain Alyssa Healy, which was good news for India but Team India lost their leg spinner Asha Shobhana due to injury after the playing eleven, which proved to be bad news. However, Radha Yadav, who came in the team in place of Asha, did not disappoint with her fielding and bowling. She took a brilliant catch of opener Beth Mooney off Renuka Singh's ball in the third over. Renuka also took the second wicket on the very next ball.

Here India had a chance to put pressure but Grace Harris and captain Tahlia McGrath shared a 62-run partnership, which helped Australia come back. Team India took the wickets of both of them but then veteran all-rounder Alice Perry became a problem and she increased the pace of runs and took the team past 130 runs. In the end, Annabel Sutherland and Phoebe Litchfield played short but fast innings to take the team to a strong score of 151 runs. Renuka Singh and Deepti Sharma took 2-2 wickets for Team India.

For Team India, Shefali Verma hit some great shots as soon as she came but in the effort to be fast, she could not hit a big shot properly and she got out in the fourth over. Smriti Mandhana's bad phase continued in this World Cup and once again she got out cheaply. Jemima Rodrigues, who saved Team India in the last several matches, could not do anything special this time and thus India lost 3 wickets for just 47 runs in 7 overs. At such a time, captain Harmanpreet and Deepti Sharma handled the innings.

However, the partnership between the two was quite slow, in which especially captain Kaur's bat failed to collect boundaries. Deepti did collect some fours and took the team past 100 runs but this is where India suffered a double blow. First Deepti was out and then Richa Ghosh was run out in the 17th over. Only 1 run came in this entire over and this proved costly for India. The quick partnership of 28 runs in 18 balls in the last over between captain Kaur and Pooja Vastrakar raised hopes of victory but in the last over Annabel Sutherland sealed India's defeat by taking a total of 4 wickets including 3 wickets. Team India could score only 142 runs after losing 9 wickets.