India's worries with the willow need answers with the World Cup beckoning

Picture this: the Indian women’s team have defied all odds and are in the final of the 2022 Women’s World Cup final, and have to stop the Australian juggernaut from rolling on. Again. Meg Lanning tosses the coin and Mithali Raj calls heads… tails it is! The Aussie skipper elects to field first. And suddenly India’s shot at history looks so much more bleak.

The Women in Blue have gathered quite the reputation as a chasing team over the past few years. At least, that’s what the record books suggest anyway.

They’ve played 23 ODIs since the start of 2019, winning 12 and losing 11. Now, while that looks like a fairly balanced affair on casual viewing, a slightly deeper dive into these numbers explain exactly why the Indian women have earned their reputation as a chasing team.

While fielding first, India have gone on to win 9 out of 10 matches in the last 3 years. While batting first, on the other hand, Mithali Raj’s team have only come away with 3 victories in 13 games. Quite the contrast, that!

India’s woes batting first

The Aussies chased down 225 in the first ODI quite comfortably.

So where exactly does the problem lie? Is it a reflection of the difficulties bowlers face in stopping the opponents from chasing down what the batters have put up? Or do the batters just magically improve when there’s a target in place?

So many questions, but even more answers. One pattern you do seem to notice with this Indian women’s team, though, is that the batters just don’t seem to be doing enough to set the stage for the bowlers.

Look at the first ODI against Australia at Mackay, for example. Having to defend 225 against a competent Aussie batting lineup, the bowlers strayed in line, length and more while going after the breakthrough that never seemed to come. The hosts ran out comfortable winners in the end.

The tour of England prior to the one Down Under yielded similar results too. Scores of 201 and 221 were chased with varying degrees of comfort by Heather Knight’s team. The bowler’s best efforts only saw the second ODI dragged on till the 48th over, with the target never really out of sight for the English.

In the final ODI, on the other hand, the bowlers did well to restrict and set up what should have been a fairly comfortable chase (but it did go down to the final over of a rain-affected 47-over match).

In the aforementioned 13 innings where India batted first, they managed to cross the 250-mark only twice. One of those times being the thriller that saw India almost break Australia’s 4-year long unbeaten streak.

To put things into context, the Australian and English teams have crossed the 300-mark on 7 occasions between them in that same period. Granted that factors like the pitch and the conditions come into the picture, but all things considered, the Indian women simply haven’t put up scores that are good enough for the bowlers to defend on a regular basis.

More often than not though, the Indian batters leave their bowling counterparts with quite the task when it comes to defending a score. While India did lose both times they did score 250+ batting first since 2019, the bowlers did also defend scores less than 200 twice, one of which was under 150 even.

Can India up the ante?

Yastika Bhatia has proved to be a breath of fresh air in the Indian side.

Now, with the World Cup taking place in New Zealand, and conditions that aren’t in India’s hands, it is imperative for the batters to work around their problems in setting a good enough total. While they’ve responded to slow starts at the top of the order by drafting swashbuckling young star Shafali Verma into the side, the middle overs still tend to drag down the run rate by quite a bit.

The signs from their most recent encounters with the Aussies do seem positive though. Young Yastika Bhatia has taken to international cricket like duck to water, and will be expected to continue in her #3 role in New Zealand. However, it will be upto her and the senior pros in captain Mithali Raj and vice-captain Harmanpreet Kaur to make sure the team kicks on from whatever start their openers give (or do not give) them.

One of the biggest problems that has come to the fore with the Indian middle-order batters has been their intent (or lack thereof). Be it their lacklustre running between the wickets in the middle overs or their inability to find (or look for) boundaries, there is plenty that the think tank have to address once they lose their openers.

Yastika aside, the fact that none of the Indian middle-order batters strike at over 70 is a cause for concern in itself. A problem that they will have to solve at the earliest if they’re to make an impression in the upcoming World Cup.

While a few more series would have been ideal preparation for the 2017 World Cup runners-up, they do get to play in New Zealand ahead of the quadrennial event. And that should allow the team to sort out their batting woes, while also getting a hang of the conditions in the meantime.

Just how well the Women in Blue use this opportunity remains to be seen. With their World Cup campaign set to kick off on March 6 against Pakistan, Mithali and her team will want to make the best of their games against the White Ferns first.