Indian Women’s Cricket team captain Harmanpreet Kaur opens on the defeat against New Zealand in the T20 World Cup 2024 clash in Dubai says “didn’t play our best cricket today“.
As per the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 schedule, India Women and New Zealand Women are scheduled to face off on October 4 at Dubai International Cricket Stadium.
India women were expected to kick start their ICC campaign with flying colours but registered a defeat in their first game of the tournament. India was placed in group A alongside New Zealand, Pakistan, Australia and Sri Lanka.
With the top two teams of the group advancing to the semifinals, India has to bounce back in their remaining games to secure the top spot.
Though India executed a decent bowling performance their batting performance was not up to the mark. Harmanpreet’s 15 runs remained the highest individual score scored by an Indian batter.
During the post-match presentation, India captain Harmanpreet Kaur said “We didn’t play our best cricket today. Going forward we have to think what areas we have to improve. Every game now is important and we have to play our best cricket”.
“We created chances, it’s not like that we didn’t create. They played better cricket than us, no doubt about that. This is such a high stage where you can’t make these mistakes. We have chased 160-170 many times.
But on that pitch, it was 10-15 runs too many. At one stage, the way they started, I was thinking it would be 180. This wasn’t the start we were expecting (in this tournament)”.
Speaking of the match, New Zealand Women won the toss and opted to bat first. Bates and Plimmer opened the inning and made an impressive opening partnership by scoring 67 runs for the first wicket.
Arundhati Reddy broke the opening stand by dismissing Bates for 27 in the 8th over while in the very next over Asha Sobhana dismissed Plimmer for 34 runs. While India was expected to continue their momentum, NZ captain Devine single-handedly scored an unbeaten 57 and led the team to score 160 runs at the end of 20 overs.
On the other hand, Indian batters struggled to withstand the aggressive bowling attack and failed to build a partnership. Women in Blue started to lose wickets a regular intervals and managed to score just 102 runs after losing all their 10 wickets at the end of 19 overs.
India Women fell 58 runs short and lost their first game of the tournament against New Zealand Women. With the defeat India pushed to the bottom spot of the ICC women’s T20 World Cup 2024 points table with an NRR of -2.900.
India will play their next match of the tournament against their arch-rival Pakistan women on October 6 in Dubai International Cricket Stadium, Dubai.
