For the third straight match at the ICC Women’s World Cup, India’s top half of the batting lineup failed to show up to leave their side in serious strife. A batting order that came into the tournament with a decent volume of runs behind them has simply not been able to replicate it at the big stage. In Guwahati against Sri Lanka, India went from 81/1 to 124/6. In Colombo against Pakistan, 67/1 turned into 159/5. And on Thursday in Visakhapatnam, South Africa inflicted another collapse: reducing India from 83/1 to 102/6.
And it is no coincidence that Smriti Mandhana was the first to fall in all three matches – India’s, perhaps even the world’s, opener in women’s ODIs over the last years, hasn’t been able to start the World Cup as well as she or India would have hoped for. Against Sri Lanka, she fell to a rash shot before even settling in, so there wasn’t too much to read into it. But in the subsequent two matches, she has tried to bat herself out of difficult situations but appeared inhibited in her otherwise fluent stroke-making, perishing for the exact same tally: 23 off 32 balls, back-to-back. In Vizag, there were some more signs of Mandhana not feeling at her best in the middle.
One would rarely associate the word ugly with her batting, but an ungainly attempt at taking the attack to Marizanne Kapp in the 7th over was just that: across the line, feet nowhere close to the ball, and just blindly swung the bat. She tried moving down the track a couple of times to counter the shape that Kapp was getting but there were a quite a few inside edges and mistimed shots from her bat. The sight of Mandhana starting to break free, with a six down the ground at the start of the 8th over after charging down at Ayabonga Khaka, was only a flash in the pan. Just when India would have hoped she has crossed the first hurdle of seeing out the powerplay, she went for a big shot in the 11th over off Nonkululeko Mlaba, got the toe end of the bat and found the fielder at long on.
Once Mandhana falls, India’s top two run-getters in the tournament so far have not been scoring at a quick enough rate. Harleen Deol’s 107 runs have come at a strike rate of 70.39, Pratika Rawal’s 105 runs at 69.07. It was a similar tale once more, with Deol falling earlier than usual while Rawal fell for a third score in the thirties, after looking sharp to begin the match.
Harmanpreet Kaur and Jemimah Rodrigues have both failed to add substantial totals at No 4 and No 5, seen as one of the strengths coming into the tournament. The skipper has frittered away three starts while Rodrigues has been out on a duck twice in three innings, out playing her bread-and-butter twice in two matches and out against left-arm spin on all three occasions.
The first step of solving a problem is, well, identifying that there is one. There have been plenty of warning signs, but India seem to have merely treated them as yellow lights and not red. The outside world is not always privy to tactical discussions that take place behind closed doors in a dressing room, but openly, India have continued to deny that they have a problem with their batting order and approach. Through all the collapses, India seem reluctant to admit that there exists a technical and tactical issue in their approach, instead choosing to, at least on the first two occasions, point their fingers towards conditions being difficult.