IND vs ENG T20Is | Women in Blue need to strike back to keep the series alive

Silver lining: Shafali’s knock was the lone bright spot for India in the opening T20I.
| Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI

The women’s cricket fraternity will have its eyes fixed on the proceedings at a suburban hotel in the Maximum City, with the Women’s Premier League player auction. But for Harmanpreet Kaur and Co., more than the proceedings at the auction enclosure, the focus will be at the Wankhede Stadium on Saturday evening.

Trailing the three-match T20I series after Wednesday’s loss in the opening fixture, India’s women will be eager to keep the series alive going into Sunday’s decider and keep its quest of winning its first bilateral series against India in the shortest format.

Not once has India beaten England in a bilateral T20I series (at least two games) so far. And the task will be humongous come Saturday.

England appears a well-rounded unit, with almost all the top players having hit top gear right from the word go. India will have to hope for Harmanpreet and Smriti Mandhana to fire with the willow in order to support an inexperienced spin pack.

Titas Sadhu, the young pacer, has recovered from an illness that forced her to be not considered for the series-opener. The star of the Asian Games gold-medal winning campaign had a long stint in the nets, both with the ball and the bat on Friday afternoon. Later on, Harmanpreet was optimistic about Titas’ availability should she be cleared by the medical staff on the match-day.

While India’s batters appeared rusty and bowlers suffered Nat Sciver-Brunt and Danny Wyatt’s wrath, the one area that India cannot afford to slip up at fielding. Wednesday’s fielding effort was mediocre, to say the least. It didn’t come as a surprise then that promising offie Shreyanka Patil along with veteran Deepti Sharma did a long drill of return catches with head coach Amol Muzumdar.

With hardly any of the India squad members to feature in the auction, Saturday will offer an ideal opportunity for the Indian girls to overshadow the money-spinners with a winning performance. Can they do it?

The teams (from):

India: Harmanpreet Kaur (Capt.), Smriti Mandhana (Vice-capt.), Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Yastika Bhatia (wk), Richa Ghosh (wk), Amanjot Kaur, Shreyanka Patil, Mannat Kashyap, Saika Ishaque, Renuka Singh Thakur, Titas Sadhu, Pooja Vastrakar, Kanika Ahuja, and Minnu Mani.

England: Heather Knight (Capt.), Lauren Bell, Maia Bouchier, Alice Capsey, Charlie Dean, Sophia Dunkley, Sophie Ecclestone, Mahika Gaur, Danielle Gibson, Sarah Glenn, Bess Heath (wk), Amy Jones (wk), Freya Kemp, Nat Sciver-Brunt, and Danielle Wyatt.

Match starts at 7 p.m.