5 reasons why India failed to win the Women’s T20 World Cup 2020
For the last few years, women’s cricket has been on the rise in India. The popularity has grown immensely especially ever since India reached the final of the 2017 World Cup. However, there has been a problem with them winning the knockouts. They lost to England in that 2017 World Cup final before losing to the same team in the semi-finals of the 2018 T20 World Cup. Now, they’ve lost the final of the 2020 T20 World Cup to Australia.
India had a very good tournament overall where topped their group after going unbeaten in the league stages. The Harmanpreet Kaur-led side beat Australia in the first game to set the tone before dispatching Bangladesh, New Zealand and Sri Lanka in the subsequent games. They were to face England in the semi-final but a washout meant that India went through by the virtue of finishing higher in the group stages.
However, there were a few obvious shortcomings that eventually led to India’s downfall. Here are five reasons why India could not go on to lift their maiden T20 World Cup title.
Senior players failing to step up
When two of your best batters average 12.25 and 6.00 in a T20 World Cup, there’s hardly any chance of winning. Going into this T20 World Cup, Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur were going to be the two key players for the Indian team. Their form has been crucial to India’s chances every time. However, runs dried up from their bats and India suffered in the big game.
It didn’t really make too much of a difference in the group stages as the others kept chipping in and the bowling attack pulled them through. But when the bowling attack failed and Shafali Verma didn’t get a start, India desperately needed Mandhana and Kaur to stand up and deliver. Unfortunately for India, that didn’t happen.
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Mandhana and Kaur couldn’t even get a single score of over 20. The left-handed opener had the highest score of 17 while the Indian captain’s top-scored with just 15 in this tournament. Hence, the form of the two big players affected India’s chances big time.