Batting fails, fielding woes, Mithali Raj’s record quest: Takeaways from India’s loss to Australia

Australia have won six out of 10 World Cups played so far, including the previous edition in 2013.
Australia are No 1 team in women’s ODIs and are led by Meg Lanning, the top ranked batter in the world.
Australia have lost only one match this World Cup, by a close three-run margin against hosts England.

The point is, it takes a more than a special effort to beat Australia. Ask Chamari Athapaththu, who scored a mammoth 178* from 143 against them a few weeks back, only for Lanning to score 152* to lead Australia to a eight-wicket win.

India, who need one more win to enter the semifinals, knew they had to put up that extraordinary effort to beat the defending champions. They could have; didn’t Smriti Mandhana-powered India tip the scales in their very first match beating hosts England? (The same England that have been unbeaten since, overcoming even Australia.) There was no reason to doubt India could do that, even though they were coming off a 115-run loss to South Africa. (The same South Africa they have beaten in the two finals this year.)

But in the end, the special effort came from the likeliest of quarters – another 100-plus stand between batting powerhouses Meg Lanning and Ellyse Perry that lead Australia’s comprehensive eight-wicket win. The high-flying duo chased down the not-so-high target of 226 with 29 balls to spare and reaches yet another semifinal at the World Cup.

Here are the three biggest talking points from India’s loss to Australia

Punam Raut’s standout century (and the subsequent collapse)

The final margin almost makes it look easy, but that wasn’t always so. At least one Indian player put in a very special effort – opener Punam Raut scored a stellar century, almost carrying her bat through an otherwise ordinary batting performance. Very rarely throughout the 95 overs could one say that India was in it, but when Raut – with her delightfully classical tough batting – slowly but steadily built her innings, one could have hoped that India would put up a fighting score.

Once again, she saw her partner Mandhana fall early. Once again, the onus was on her to see out the new ball and not give away her wicket. She did it all; pacing her innings, balancing the risk-taking scoring shots with watchful dots, playing confidently against the spinners and punishing the loose balls to get to her century off 129 – a healthy strike rate.

When she reached her ton, she whipped her helmet off and yelled heartily, the one rare moment when emotion got the better of her. You could see how much her second ton in ODIs meant to her.

However, the rest of the Indian batting couldn’t back her and as soon as she fell on 106 off 136 in the 47th over, the procession began. The rest of the Indian lineup could only add 23 runs after her wicket. It was an abject collapse, as India squandered the good position Raut and Raj had painstakingly built. Four wickets fell in the span of four overs – all batters with potential – as Australia didn’t let India step on the accelerator. Off the many things that went wrong for India, it is this failure to capitalise on a solid batting effort that will hurt the team’s morale the most.

Mithali Raj’s strange innings

It was milestone innings from Mithali Raj, no taking away from that. She became the highest run-getter in the history of women’s ODIs, surpassing Charlotte Edwards’ 5992 runs. She also became the first ever batter to cross 6000 runs, en route her 49th ODI half-century. Remarkable records all, yet they ended up in a losing cause, and perhaps because of these very records.

Coming in early after Mandhana fell, Raj was very slow off the blocks. Understandable, she had an innings to build. But plodding through dot balls, not taking quick singles and not calling for a possible third was not.

Her innings of 69 had four boundaries and a six, but came off 114 deliveries. She took five balls to get off the mark, nothing like the 15 dots she played against Sri Lanka to score. She played 54 balls before getting to 20, 75 to get to 30 (while Raut reached her 50 in 78) On her 82nd ball, she made 34 and 5993rd ODI run. That seemed to break the shackles to some extent as she slammed that sweetly-timed, straight six in the very next over, which brought up her 40. She got to her 50 on the 96th ball she faced and nine balls later reached 60. She was ultimately dismissed on 69 off 114, giving Kristen Beams a simple return catch.

At certain points in the match, it looked like the wait for the record was weighing her down, a perfectly natural anxiety even though she denied it after the match. For whatever reason though, Raj simply couldn’t find the gaps often enough and neither did she try to free her arms and go for her shots. Her scoring rate did improve after the record, as the numbers above suggest, but the only time she went for a big shot was when she lofted Beans for a six to complete 6000 runs. Her knocks was scratchy to say the least.

Raj admitted more runs in the middle would have helped and she wasn’t very happy with the way she batted, but that was in hindsight. “I can say I’m happy even though I’m not happy in terms of the result or the way I scored them today,” she said when asked about her records. Clearly, the very experienced Mithali Raj also realised that her batting had cost her team.

To add to that, there were some questionable captaincy decisions that had most confused.

Firstly, why would you withhold Deepti Sharma – the No 3 batter who has a 188 to her name (only the second highest ever) and is reliable, if not big-hitting, bat – till the last over with eight wickets already fallen. Raj coming in at one down, followed by hard-hitting Harmanpreet Kaur and Veda Krishnamurthy in the latter overs made sense. But sending Suhsma Verma, Jhulan Goswami and even Shikha Pandey ahead of Sharma didn’t. For context, she faced two balls, ran a single and then hit a boundary. Injury could have been a reason, but then she bowled her quota of 10 overs. So why was a free-flowing batter like Sharma buried at No 9?

India’s fielding troubles 

Second, why not go for the kill in the field, when you have a small target to defend? The ball was turning from the very beginning, with even Australia opening with a spinner. Raj rotated her four front-line spinners a lot but didn’t employ the slip regularly enough to aid them. Even in the middle overs, a slip would have cramped the in-form Lanning and she would have had to improvise – a potentially wicket-taking decision. But leaving the close-in field relatively free is almost criminal, when you are trying to get as many wickets as you can with spinners who have been incisive throughout the tournament.

At the halfway mark, 226 could have been a fighting total, as Raj believed. “It was a decent total after losing our first wicket in the first couple of overs. We should have got more runs in the middle overs, but it was still a competitive total. But the bowlers didn’t look penetrative, it was a slow wicket,” Raj said at the post match ceremony. But as she rued the batters’ lack of runs in the slog overs and the bowlers’ lack of breakthroughs, she seems to have missed out on the lacklustre fielding. With a few exceptions like Sharma and Veda, the overall intensity on the field just wasn’t there. Sharma effected a direct hit to get rid of Beth Mooney, but other than that, there was nothing positive on the field.

Have a look at India’s fielding record during Australia’s chase, it’s not a pretty picture.

Australia made 15 runs off misfields, a big number when defending a target as small as 226. They won with 29 balls to spare. Now imagine if the Indian fielders were sharp and didn’t let misfields and overthrows give away free runs. Would the chase have been tighter? Would the scoreboard pressure have given India a few more wickets? It’s a question of “Ifs and Buts”, but in a tournament as big and lengthy as the World Cup, it is these “ifs” that matter in the long run.

India play New Zealand next, in a virtual do-or-die quarterfinal in their last league game. If Mithali Raj and Co are to advance to the semifinals, there will be a lot to introspect and improve for them as an overall unit.