 "The ghost of Lord’s lingers, but India’s women are ready to script a new World Cup story")
July 23, 2017. Lord’s Cricket Ground. Women’s World Cup final. India have never been here before. Both in terms of the occasion and in terms of how close they are to actually scripting history. After 42.4 overs, they are soundly placed at 191-3. They only need 28 more, and have 44 balls and seven wickets in hand.
Punam Raut, having carefully crafted her way to 86, is on strike. Harmanpreet Kaur, India’s semi-final hero, has set the game up with a gritty 51 too. Anya Shrubsole, knowing England need wickets and a glut of them, runs in and…she traps Raut in front.
Revisiting India’s narrow loss at Lord’s
The umpire gives it out, and Raut, perhaps shell-shocked by how she has let go of this opportunity to take India past the finish line and into the promised land, deliberates too much over the review. She runs out of time. Over the next half hour or so, India run out of steam, and ultimately, run into disappointment of the worst kind.
India have played a lot of cricket since. And they have flourished in a lot of cricket since. But somehow, memories and scars from that afternoon in London remain fresh. That is not India’s doing. Nor is any player, part of the setup then and still in the fold now, guilty of letting past mishaps shape current happenings.
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But that is also how sporting memories work. Things that you want to forget, are often the toughest to actually cast aside. And it is amid that backdrop that India, much more of a force now than they were then or have ever been, get ready for a home Women’s World Cup.
It is not a home Women’s World Cup in its entirety because if things align a certain way, the final could yet be played in Colombo. But it does definitely feel like one. The fever that has gripped the country already, the way it is being built up, and of course, the vibe that India, after so many years and so many tries, might actually finish with something tangible.
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In tournaments gone by, India have, at times, lacked the requisite belligerence. Whether it be at the women’s T20 World Cup last year, the Commonwealth Games prior to it or the most recent Women’s World Cup in New Zealand.
But now, they have the right personnel to play an aggressive brand of cricket, which has come through in the past couple of years. Which means India do not just have a puncher’s chance, they can go toe-to-toe with the best the tournament has to offer (read Australia) and do it for a sustained period, with such performances no longer feeling like an anomaly.
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Smriti Mandhana, so regularly India’s batting spearhead, has adopted a more cavalier role herself, especially with Shafali Varma not in the mix. That has had a dual effect: not only has it allowed Pratika Rawal to ease into international cricket and rack up runs, it has given Mandhana the sort of aura her talent demands and warrants.
While there may have been lines or lengths or specific types of bowlers that would have been used earlier to curb Mandhana’s scoring, there seems to be little that teams can do now, with Mandhana enhancing her stroke-play and expanding its range.
The same could be said about Jemimah Rodrigues and Richa Ghosh, both of whom now play pivotal middle-order roles. The former, in particular, has been excellent after moving down the order and her combination of snappy running and silky boundary-hitting provides contrast to Ghosh’s swashbuckling and power-packed style, almost always giving the opposition two vastly different problems to solve.
Between these two exceptionally functional partnerships stands captain Harmanpreet. Arguably India’s best big game player. And while there’s a notion that she has struggled recently, T20I form must not be confused with ODI numbers, and she currently averages 38.44 this year, striking at more than 100 in women’s ODIs. Harmanpreet is also part of a very short list of cricketers in the women’s game who can reach out for something if she wants it and grab it.
India do have a few rough edges to smoothen out, though. Rawal and Harleen Deol’s strike rate has come under the scanner more than once and in games where Mandhana gets out early or does not provide India enough of a cushion up top, it remains to be seen how this pair fares, and how India cope.
Their bowling attack, on flat tracks, has a tendency to leak runs too. They are probably lacking a genuinely quick bowler capable of breaking games open, and that means if teams get on top of them, they will have a battle trying to wrestle back momentum.
But these are flaws that can be ironed out through the course of a tournament, or masked across it. Meaning it could and probably will come down to how India handle the pressure of a big tournament, and the pressure of playing that big tournament at home, where everything – their success, their stumbles, their strengths, their shortcomings - will get magnified.
The pressure and advantage of hosting the World Cup
At the same time, however, it is tough to escape the supposition that India finally have what it takes to last the distance. While they may have been more tangibly closer to the crown on that ultimately sombre and grim afternoon in northwest London, they might never have felt this close to a Women’s World Cup triumph.
They have the players. They have the firepower. They have the experience. They have their fans behind them too. But like most things sport, that will only take India to within a step of where they want to be. And that last step, that final and fitting foray into fantasy land, will, at the cost of stating the obvious, only come about after they have traversed it.
India, of course, will want to be involved on November 2. In Navi Mumbai. Wanting to do what they failed to all those years ago. And with the eyes of the world descending on them. But if on November 3 and for the next four years, they are not called the champions of the world, they will feel a little incomplete. With a nagging feeling in the tummy of what could have been but ultimately was not.
India know how that feels. After their run-in with fate in 2017. Now, they would want to live the experience on the other side - the winning side. And they would want to write a chapter that will remain theirs now and forever, and will be reminisced over across the length and the breadth of the country whenever the Women’s World Cup, India, or history is spoken about.
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