Do or die for India

India was on a rampaging run beating England, West Indies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka before South Africa disturbed its momentum with a massive 115-run win. 

Similarly, Australia’s four-match unbeaten run was stopped by England in the previous game and it would also look to get back to winning ways. 

Neither of the teams has yet qualified for the semi- finals but Australia is in a better position by virtue of a strong net run-rate. 

The Aussies lost to England by just three runs, while India was defeated by SA by a huge margin. 

In the previous game against South Africa, India had a great chance of sealing a semifinal berth but now it has its task cut out in the remaining round robin games against two strong teams in Australia and New Zealand. 

The last match witnessed an abject batting surrender by India as it got out for a meagre 158 while chasing 274. 

The game were pretty much done and dusted when India collapsed to 56 for six in the 17th over before Deepti Sharma saved the team the blushes of getting bowled out for under 100 by scoring 60 off 111 balls in the able company of number nine Jhulan Goswami, who remained unbeaten on 43. 

India’s record against Australia is not great with eight wins in 41 completed matches, but skipper Mithali Raj’s 89 set up a five-wicket win the last time the teams met. 

It would expect the likes of in-form Smriti Mandhana, Punam Raut and Harmanpreet Kaur, besides Deepti and Mithali to fire in unison against the Australians. 

Shikha Pandey, who came back into the side against South Africa and took three wickets for 40 runs, said her team was aware of the precarious position it was in. 

“We need to pull ourselves back from the defeat. The best cricket that we can play is there, so hopefully it will come against Australia,” said Pandey.

“We need to play more attacking cricket and need to plan better. Even before the World Cup started, we said that we were going to do our best and not have to depend on other teams,” she added. 

For Australia, tomorrow’s game is a return to Bristol where England sneaked a three-run win and skipper Meg Lanning said they would have to bounce back quickly and put on a strong performance. 

“Against England was not our best performance with the ball but hopefully we can learn from that pretty quickly and come back for India,” said Lanning.