The India women's cricket team played out a total of 181 dot balls as they lost to England in the first match in Bristol, with only Shafali Verma scoring at a strike-rate of over 100.
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The India women’s cricket team started their tour of England on a good note when they drew the one-off Test. However, in the first ODI, the problems that has been haunting the Indian team for the past two years came to the fore again. Mithali Raj’s side lost for the fifth time in six ODIs as they were crushed by eight wickets in the first match. India could manage only 201/8 and England got to the score with 15 overs to spare.
The main problem for the India women’s cricket team was the strike rate and their inability to pace the innings well. Consider this, India women’s cricket team played out a total of 181 dots. That is 30.1 overs of effectively maiden overs. The run rate throughout the entire Indian innings was just above 3.5. Only two batters managed to get their strike rate near 100 but both could not continue for long periods of time.
Shafali Verma became the youngest debutant across all formats and there was plenty of excitement. Her knock of 15 consumed only 14 balls but she could not carry on. Towards the fag end of the innings, Pooja Vastrakar hit 15 off 17 balls to have a strike-rate of 88. In between Shafali and Vastrakar, the rest of the experienced batting line-up failed to match the tempo.
Smriti Mandhana, an aggressive player, consumed 25 balls for her 10. Mithali Raj, one of the legends of the side, took up 108 balls for her 72. Punam Raut consumed 61 balls for her 32. Deepti Sharma had a slightly better batting performance with 30 off 46 balls. But, strike-rates of 40, 52, 66, 65 and 58 will not help many teams win games.
It is the era of 2021 where power-hitting and fast scoring seem to be the new normal. Even in women’s cricket, the advent of many T20 leagues has raised the power-hitting by several notches. India women’s ODI team, in contrast, seem to be stuck in the 90s when accumulation was the norm.
India’s batters struggled even in the five-match ODI series against South Africa. In the one match that they won, Mandhana scored at a strike-rate of over 100 and Raut had reached close to 70. In all the games that they lost, the batters all struggled. In the first ODI, Harmanpreet Kaur was the only one who had a strike-rate of close to 100. The next highest was, for a minimum of 25 balls, was 58 by Deepti Sharma. In the one game that they came close, every batter had a strike-rate in excess of 70. Although they lost the match, that was a sheer case of bad luck. When India posted a big total in excess of 250, all the batters had strike-rates over 60. Harmanpreet starred with 154 while Raut managed 84 when she hit her 100.
Whenever India has posted a low score, the top order has had bad strike rates. The pressure to being unable to accelerate is hurting India big time in the last seven-eight months. Even Mithali Raj acknowledged this in the post-match presentation. “Something we need to address (dot balls). England definitely has a very experienced bowling attack. They know what lengths to bowl in these conditions,” Mithali Raj. Unless they do not rectify this, it could be too late in the series.
