India opened their account in the points table of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup after beating Pakistan by six wickets, chasing 106 on Sunday in Dubai. India’s right-arm medium pacer Arundhati Reddy, who won the player of the match award for her three wickets, and Pakistan captain Fatima Sana addressed the post-match press conference.
Batting first, Pakistan posted a modest 105 in 20 overs. “We were short of 10-15 runs. We didn’t use powerplay well. Any score between 130-140 would have been good on this pitch which was little on the slower side. Next match we will try to score more runs,” said Fatima.
While the batters failed to impress, Pakistan bowlers bowled well to pull things back. The 16th over bowled by Fatima in which she picked two big wickets (Jemimah Rodrigues and Richa Ghosh) of consecutive deliveries put India under some pressure.
“I wanted to pick as many wickets as possible in that over. We wanted to take the game deep because we know teams have lost from winning position,” stated Fatima.
Unlike the Pakistan batters, Indian batters, who knew the target to chase took time to settle. Reddy said, “Pitch was on the slower side. The plan was for the openers to see it (the new ball) off and finish (the game) accordingly.”
While Shafali Verma top scored with the bat for India with 32 runs from 35 balls, with the ball, it was Reddy, who was the leading wicket-taker. She said, “Last couple of years I have tried to work as a complete T20 bowler. I wanted to be a bowler who could bowl in all phases.”
She was a part of the T20 World Cup in 2020 and after almost three years has made a comeback into the Indian team. “(When I was out of reckoning), I always wanted to play for India (again). When I was off, I worked on what I needed to improve. I wanted to be the best all-rounder in the world, that was the mindset,” Reddy expressed.
Quite contrary to what was expected that India would go bang-bang right from the word go in the run chase to improve their net run rate, Women in Blue adopted a cautious approach. Reddy justified, “We understand NRR is important. But winning the game is all the more important. We have discussed (about NRR). We are Looking forward to improving it in the next two matches.”
I am a former cricketer having represented Mumbai University at All India University level. I was a part of MCA probables for the U-19 and U-23 age group. I have been an avid cricket writer for the last five years. Currently I am pursuing my Ph.D from IIT Bombay.
