Lot was expected from a dominant Indian women’s team who were playing their semi-finals against England in world T20. India top their pool courtesy of victories over New Zealand, Pakistan, Ireland and former champions Australia. India looked in sublime form and were favourites to thump a much fancied opponents in England but it was not to be today.
Harmanpreet Kaur evicted the veteran Mithali Raj from the team in a crunch match where her experience could have made the difference and as a result the Indian batting fumbled under tremendous pressure and could just manage 112/10 in the quota of 20 overs. The women in blue were 89/3 at one stage but the lack of experienced play by the middle order became the reason of their downfall.
England chased down the target with ease and won the match by 8 wickets with close to 3 overs left.
Harmanpreet and newly elected coach Ramesh Powar faced the heat by the fans as they lashed out at them for not including Mithali for a heavyweight encounter.
Mithali Raj’s manager lashes out at Harmanpreet
Raj’s manager Annisha Gupta got too furious on Harmanpreet for dropping the veteran player. She took to twitter to express her discontent.
“Unfortunately @BCCIWomen believes in politics not sport. After witnessing what @M_Raj03 ‘s experience could do in IndvIre it’s shocking that they went with what pleases @ImHarmanpreet -a manipulative, lying, immature, undeserving captain,” Gupta tweeted.
This tweet was from an unverified account but she later confirmed her statements to ESPN Cricinfo.
“I’d like to say that I don’t know what is going on on the inside but, now that the matches are being telecast, we can see who is performing and who is not,” . “And we can see the kind of treatment that Mithali has received despite her brilliant performance and despite showing stability and consistency. The kind of treatment she has received is completely uncalled for and there is something deeper than we need to look at than just the statements that have been coming out,” Gupta was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo
“There are statements coming out that they wanted to give younger cricketers a chance but you don’t drop your senior-most, most experienced players in a semi-final against a country like England. It goes beyond giving the youngsters a chance,” she added.
One main reason for ousted of Mithali
The veteran batswoman scored 51 off 56 balls in the pool stage match against Ireland. India managed to make 145/6 in the match and went onto win the battle by 52 runs. However, the slow paced innings of Mithali may have been a prominent reason why the team management didn’t showed their interest in her in a high profile clash. T20 if often said to be the game of youngsters but experience do help.
