ICC Women’s World T20: Buoyant India need to improve catching to become title contenders

India have avenged their 2016 World T20 defeat in Delhi by vanquishing their arch-rivals Pakistan by seven wickets at the Providence Stadium in Guyana on Sunday.

But it was far from a convincing victory for the Women in Blue. The most disappointing aspect was India’s fielding, especially catching. They dropped four relatively easy catches. Against a better team such as Australia whom they are going to meet in the group stage and/or in any of the knock out matches, such sloppy fielding could prove disastrous.

A relatively weak team like Pakistan got to their best ever score in the World T20 due to the abysmally poor fielding effort by their arch-rivals. India's fielding looked sharp in the initial stages. The slip catch by Veda Krishnamurthy to dismiss Ayesha Zafar was nothing short of outstanding.

Then the two run outs, effected by Jemimah Rodrigues and Radha Yadav, were from the top drawer. Those three early wickets, stemming from some brilliant fielding and catching from India, pegged Pakistan back.

Ironically, it was the same fielding unit that let India down and allowed Pakistan to get back into the match. Smriti Mandhana and Veda Krishnamurthy, who are two of India’s best fielders, dropped comfortable catches. Veda’s drop off Nida Dar proved quite expensive as the batter scored 52 runs from 35 balls.

Poonam Yadav dropped two catches. On one of those two occasions, she did not even go for the catch and merely hoped that someone else would go for it. This happened at a time when India had already dropped three sitters and it seemed none of the players wanted an aerial ball to come to them.

The fact that India managed to win the match by a comfortable manner in the end should not hide the poor fielding effort. Perhaps, it could have been due to the nerves that set in when India and Pakistan play each other.

But then again, they could face similar pressure in knock out matches. Their struggles to handle pressure haunted them in the concluding stages of the 2017 World Cup final against England. One hopes their fielding effort against Pakistan was an one-off event and India go on to catch much better in the remainder of the tournament.