Mandhana takes blame for India’s choke-job against England saying that ‘The emotions took over’ during the chase.
India’s batting collapse against England in their women’s World Cup encounter in Indore on Sunday night, where they went from requiring a run-a-ball 57 with seven wickets remaining to losing by four runs, has been attributed to Smriti Mandhana.
With left-arm spinners Sophie Ecclestone and Linsey Smith bowling six of the final nine overs, Mandhana, who were chasing 289 for a victory, was knocked for 88 off 94 balls in the 42nd over. They then fell to 262 for 6 by the 47th and were unable to muster the last push.
“We could have done better with our shot selection,” a subdued-looking Mandhana said at the press conference. “It started from me, so I will take it on myself that the shot selection should have been better. We just needed six runs per over. Maybe we should have taken the game deeper. I’ll take it [upon] myself because the collapse started from me.”
Smith used deep square-leg, deep midwicket, long-on, and long-off bowling techniques to get to Mandhana from around the wicket. Mandhana tried to go inside out over the covers, but the ball strayed a bit and he mistimed it, sending it straight down the throat of the long-off.
“I thought I could take her on, I was trying to aim more over covers,” Mandhana said. “I mistimed that shot. Maybe the shot wasn’t needed at that time. I just needed to be more patient because throughout the innings I was trying to tell myself to be patient and not to play aerial shots.
“The emotions took over for that one, which never helps in cricket. But walking back, I was pretty confident that we’ll be able to get the win. But it’s cricket, you can’t ever think too far ahead. If you lose, I don’t think [a good innings] means anything. I had to be a little more patient than I’ve been in the last two-three months.”
India ended up needing to defend targets twice against South Africa and Australia after playing all four of the previous games with five bowlers total. They substituted Renuka Singh, an additional bowler, for Jemimah Rodrigues against England. In the end, India was ordered to chase, and the decision to alter the team’s balance was made public.
“In the last two matches, we thought that five bowling options were not good enough, especially on a flat track like Indore or [the way] the second game in Visakhapatnam played out,” Mandhana said. “We are not privileged enough to have batters who could bowl a few overs, which a lot of other teams can do. So on a flatter track, we thought that five bowling options could cost us, especially if one bowler has a bad day.
“It was definitely a very tough call to drop a player like Jemi. But sometimes you need to do those sorts of things to get the balance right. It is not like this [combination] is going to be there [for the rest of the tournament]. We’ll have to see how the situation is, how the wicket will play and then we’ll take a call.”