Indian viewers typically pay scant attention to women’s cricket; but yesterday was different. The women in blue had reached the semi final of the ongoing ICC Women's World Cup, where they took on the defending champions Australia and the women in blue managed to snag the nation’s imagination. What happened next will go down in the annals of women’s cricket as one of the best days ever!
The match was curtailed by rain to a 42 overs a side game. India won the toss and elected to bat. At the beginning of the innings, things did not look good for India. The openers departed early and skipper Mithali Raj (36 off 61) also was not in top form. The scorecard read 2/34 in the 9th over, which was far from encouraging.
She came in and decided to just dispatch the Australian bowling in all directions. She blazed to a century, then to 150 and remained not out till the end with a spectacular 171 off a mere 115 balls. The blitzkrieg was studded with 20 boundaries and 7 heaves over the fence at a strike rate of nearly 150. She was visibly struggling towards the end, but she was unstoppable.
Thanks to Kaur, 281 in 42 overs always looked to be a difficult target; plus the Indian bowlers kept the pressure on to keep taking regular wickets. Deepti Sharma took 3 wickets, Jhulan Goswami and Flt Lt Shikha Pandey took two wickets each.
At one point the Australian women were 21 for 3 in the 5th over and then 148 for 6. It was all over by the 41st over; Australia all out for 245; losing by 35 runs. India are now up against the England women at Lords for the Final on Sunday 23rd July 2017.
She was not out on the field when India bowled; clearly owning to some injury, but she avoided talking about this when she was interviewed after receiving her Player of the Match award. This was the fifth highest score by any woman cricketer, and her third century. Kaur’s innings is one that one could liken to Kapil Dev’s famed 175 against Zimbabwe in 1983’s Prudential World Cup, a tournament India went on to win!
Sachin Tendulkar, Ravi Shastri, Virat Kohli, Anil Kumble, Kapil Dev, Suresh Raina and many others were all watching and cheering; many tweeting in real time; applauding Kaur’s pyrotechnics
The girls have a lot of good wishes and high hopes going into the finals against England on Sunday. Our women have beaten them before; a billion hopes that we can do it again!
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