The victory over Pakistan kept India in contention for a place in the semifinals to be held from Group A, though it was by the smallest of margins.
On Sunday night, Cleveland survived a mild shock at the Dubai International Stadium against Pakistan, as India managed to pull through a six-wicket win. Indian fans were still recovering from the painful 58-run loss against New Zealand on the opening day of the Women T20 World Cup that same stadium, the next day.
The win did keep India alive in the race to make the semifinal from Group A but only by a bare margin.
On one such hot afternoon in Dubai in Semifinal, Fatima Sana Pakistan captain, in order to knock India under pressure with posting a huge score on the board and have them one step closer to the edge of the semis after their nice victory over srilanka in the opener last Thursday, decided to chase the target. However, with the help of Arundhati Reddy and Shreyanka Patil who shared five wickets between them, the Indian squad cut down the Pakistan batting line-up cheaply to 105 for 8 wickets.
As far as India was concerned, the equation was quite clear: there should be no second best, only a win…and a big one at that. Why? They had already lost to New Zealand by 58 runs, which gave them the last place in Group A with a net run rate of -2.9. However, India started off slow in the chase this time as well, only 25 runs were scored in the powerplay overs with the loss of 1 wicket and later it improved to 61 for 2 at one stage in that game, now this in itself left their hopes in the match looking bleak.
Nonetheless, they rather upped the game & finished it with 7 balls remaining in the innings. But it did little or nothing towards their NRR predicament.
Where do India’s chances stand after Pakistan wins?
Fifth spot, a possible, most convincing wins should have meant bringing India in the Group A Table to third place, ahead of Pakistan and behind the defending champions, Australia and New Zealand. However the rather dull chase at least allowed India’s NRR to recover to -1.217 which is still worse than Pakistan’s which is -0.555 so they seem to currently occupy that fourth place.
However, if they want to cross over into the semifinals they have only two days left for such a scenario and if their next game is again abysmal which is again against Sri Lanka on the same ground on October 9, then even a win might not be helpful. That win, if won in that way only would have left India with a must win against Australia during the last match of that group. Of course it would partly justify the defeat that is expected on Tuesday by New Zealand to Australia.
Smriti Mandhana defends India’s sluggish batting
Even though the batting was not convincing, vice-captain Smriti Mahendra, who stepped in for the injured captain Harmanpreet after the match in semifinal, attempted to justify the team’s excessively cautious approach while chasing a target of 106.
“Me and Shafali could not time the ball,” she was truthful with such an admission. We were not quite easy going about it because we did not want to end up unnecessarily losing a lot of wickets in Semifinals. It was a little bit of a calculative issue. The NRR is in our head,” said Mandhana.