India’s top-3 under focus as Australia loom large and the likes of Mandhana, Harmanpreet and Jemimah have not found their stride.
India’s top-3 need to answer the call of their side quicker than ever.
India’s Women’s World Cup campaign is almost halfway over, and their results have fallen short of the expectations they set before the competition. Australia is waiting on Sunday, and they haven’t even approached playing the ideal game.
The biggest issue facing India is that their top five players have been reduced to rubble, and in each of the three games, their innings has required a lower-order rescue. They recovered sufficiently to win their opening two games, but they lost to South Africa, who were their most formidable opponents to date.
India’s difficulty is notable because none of their senior trio of Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur, and Jemimah Rodrigues have reached a half-century. In this competition, it has been the norm for most teams to lose five or six wickets by about 25 overs.
India’s top five averages 23.13, which is lower than the averages of all the other seven World Cup teams, including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and England, who are all serious challengers for the semi-finals. India is the only team without a score of 50 or higher from their top five among those who have played at least two games. India’s top five ranks third from the bottom in terms of run rate.
Mandhana is on course to become the first woman to hit 1000 ODI runs in a year after breaking a 28-year record set by Belinda Clark during the most recent match against South Africa. Since the beginning of 2024, she has amassed eight hundreds, the second-fastest of which was 125 off 63 balls against Australia last month.
However, she has only made eight, twenty-three, and twenty-three so far in the World Cup. It was difficult to believe that the flattest pitch India had ever played on was the setting for her scratchiest innings, which she played against South Africa. She struggled against Marizanne Kapp’s swing and was regularly beaten in Visakhapatnam until holing out against Nonkululeko Mlaba, a left-arm spinner.
Prior to this World Cup, Mandhana’s close friend Rodrigues was not far behind. She achieved both of her ODI hundreds in 2025, and for the first time in a single year, her strike rate exceeded one run per ball. After spending her formative years in the top rank, she had achieved success at No. 5, a position that was awarded to her only in 2023.
To be fair to Rodrigues, Sri Lanka’s left-arm spinner Inoka Ranaweera, who smashed off stump with drift and turn from around the wicket, is a strong candidate to win the ball of the tournament. But in India’s next two games, Rodrigues too lost her wicket to left-arm spin.
Although Harmanpreet hasn’t had a fantastic season thus far, she is the kind of batter who may suddenly shine, particularly when facing Australia, India’s next opponent. Anjum Chopra immediately criticised her for getting through the shot too early against Tyron’s left-arm spin. She also struggled for rhythm against Pakistan, got completely stuck against South Africa, and made a cameo against Sri Lanka when India needed more. She crawled to 9 off 23.
India’s Nos. 6 through 9 have shown in the last three games that they are capable of pulling the team out of a deep hole. As the race to the semi-finals heats up with difficult matches against Australia and then England, it is now up to Mandhana, Harmanpreet, and Rodrigues to make sure they don’t end up in one.