New Zealand’s win over Pakistan in the Women’s T20 World Cup saw the latter get knocked out, along with India, on Monday. It meant that no subcontinent team remained in contention.
In the nine editions of the T20 World Cup so far, India is the only subcontinent side to make the knockouts, reaching the semifinals five times.
Of the four sides in this World Cup, India was the strongest, largely courtesy of its competitive ecosystem. A robust and fairly set-in-stone domestic structure and two seasons of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) have given domestic cricketers a visible platform.
The creamy layer of Indian players — Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma and Jemimah Rodrigues — have also been plying their trade in various franchise leagues.
India came into the current edition with elaborate plans, including experimentation with the batting line-up in 10 months leading to the World Cup. While Sri Lanka and Pakistan had international fixtures between the Asia Cup and the World Cup, India and Bangladesh — largely due to political strife — did not. Back home, separate camps for fitness, fielding and skills were held in Bengaluru, alongside intra-squad games.
But when the action got underway, it was a belowpar show with India managing just two wins in
four games, both coming against the weaker sides. The final nail was the ninerun loss to Australia where India’s age-old fault lines came to the fore. Incidentally, India failed to secure a spot in the knockouts for the first time under Harmanpreet’s captaincy.
The other three Asian teams — Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — largely rely on their captains. Led by Fatima Sana in this edition, Pakistan — much like the men’s side — has stagnated due to constant change in leadership and the lack of domestic frame work. The players not getting their salaries for four months did not help either.
Against New Zealand, Sana’s side dropped eight catches, many of them regulation ones. Pakistan’s batting has been its biggest weakness, with just a couple of players (Sana included) looking competitive at this level.
Nigar Sultana has had a similar story in Bangladesh. While the bowling unit has taken 19 of the possible 40 wickets in group games, the other departments have not kept up.
Asian champion Sri Lanka came into the tournament on a high, led by Chamari Athapaththu.
But that bubble burst quite spectacularly in the group stage, more so with Athapaththu having a tournament to forget with the bat.