Series at stake as India look to draw level against South Africa in 4th ODI
LUCKNOW: Consistency will be the key to success for the hosts India when they take on the favourites South Africa in the fourth women’s one-day international, at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana International Stadium here on Sunday.
After an eight-wicket defeat in the first game of the five-match series last week, Mithali Raj and Co bounced back superbly, handing the visitors their worst loss (9 wickets) against the hosts on Tuesday. But they failed to continue their consistency and lost the third game by six runs (D/L method) on Friday to allow the visitors to take a 2-1 lead.
One more loss and the series would be in the pockets of Sune Luus and Co. So, India need consistency in all departments with a special focus on hard-hitting batting in the middle order first and then some clever bowling against the South African batswomen, especially Lizelle Lee, who single-handedly fashioned the team’s win, hitting an unbeaten 131-ball 132 after India posted a challenging 248/5 in the third match.
The Friday’s win was for the second time when South Africans gate-crashed India’s party. Mithali’s deputy Harmanpreet Kaur did appear in her 100th ODI, a record in itself, in the first game, but India lost. The story was repeated again on Friday when Mithali set up a milestone of scoring 10,000 international runs, but India again lost.
Although the 38-year-old Mithali accepted that it was like any other match for her, she knew well that the celebration of reaching the milestone would have been sweeter, if India had won the match, too.
Mithali put the blame on the team’s frontline bowlers, who failed to shift the momentum in the hosts’ favour even after the batters put up a challenging total. “There were moments in the game when the main bowlers were bowling an important spell, which could have changed the momentum of the team and we weren’t able to do that,” she said in her post-match chat.
Mithali didn’t say anything directly about “rustiness” still hitting the side hard, but indicated that team needed to have a considerable amount of matches before the hosts get into the groove. She also cited how other teams had started playing cricket post-pandemic while India began quite late.
“When we played against Australia or say England, we are looking to score 270-plus but having said that, this is our third game after a long gap and we are one of those countries which started cricket quite late, whereas other teams have already played a couple of series,” she said.
“So, we need to have some game time to work on the players so that we build a game plan for future series. And those will become important for how we plan for the World Cup and what are the things where we need to work on. It’s going to be a process and we have already started on it. After such a long gap, the girls clearly need some outing out there,” she further said.
On India’s batting in the last 10 overs, Mithali emphasised the need of good batters for the slog overs.
“We definitely need to have batters playing the last 10 overs, because obviously the sort of game that a batter has, and can improve it to the optimum, the lower or tail-ender may not, so it is important that we have the batters playing the last 10 overs.”
“Yes, we have players like Harman (Harmanpreet Kaur) and Deepti (Sharma) and it is just a matter of a few innings that they will come good in those 10 overs.”
Veteran pacer Jhulan Goswami has regularly provided the breakthroughs and stays at the top with eight scalps and her form will be crucial to India’s chances. But the big worry for the Women in Blue is the “ineffective” show of their star spinner Poonam Yadav, who is yet to grab a single wicket in all three outings. In the 28 overs that has she bowled so far, including eight in the second game, the 29-year-old leggie has conceded 115 runs, but without a wicket.
With four wickets so far, spinner Rajeshwari Gayakwad has played the supporting role well. Mansi Joshi, too, had picked up a couple of wickets in second ODI, but they still need to be more effective to contain the South African batswomen like Lee, who has been in a tremendous form notching up 219 runs, including an unbeaten 132 in Friday’s game.
South Africa’s bowling department is quite rich with one of the top pacers in the world Shabnim Ismail leading the team’s chart with six wickets in the series. Marizanne Kapp and Nonkululeko Mlaba, with two wickets each, too have been doing pretty well. The match starts at 9.00 a.m.