ICC Women World Cup 2022: We need to work very hard with our batting – Mithali Raj

Indian captain Mithali Raj admitted that they need to work hard with their batting in the ongoing ICC Women World Cup 2022 after losing by four wickets against defending champions England at the Bay Oval, Mount Maunganui on Wednesday.

England captain Heather Knight won the toss and elected to field first but India was skittled out for a paltry score of 134 runs. Apart from Smriti Mandhana and Richa Ghosh, none of the Indian batters could get going. Mandhana scored 35 runs whereas Ghosh added 33 runs but Women in Blue kept losing wickets at regular intervals.

Charlotte Dean was the pick of the England bowlers as she scalped four wickets and conceded only 23 runs in her 8.2 overs. Anya Shrubsole also picked two wickets for England. Furthermore, Richa Ghosh and Deepti Sharma were run-out.

In fact, India had posted a par score of 317 runs against the West Indies but they could not keep the same form against England.

Mithali Raj was disappointed with her team’s batting effort as the team couldn’t get the partnerships and failed to achieve any kind of momentum in their batting innings.

Mithali Raj said in the post-match presentation, “I think after those early wickets, they got a good partnership going and it seemed like 280 would be on the cards. But we did well to pull things back at the end. It was a chaseable score, provided the top order managed the run rate properly. We needed one of the batters to bat deep. There was a lot of extra bounce under lights, nothing unplayable but we could have done better. The batting needs to get better. The bowlers have done well today, they did well last game too. The batting has to step up.”

On the other hand, Indian bowling did well as they picked six wickets. Meghna Singh took three wickets whereas Jhulan Goswami picked one wicket to complete 250 ODI wickets in her career.

India will need to come up with a better batting performance in their upcoming matches. The Mithali Raj-led team will next face Australia at Eden Park, Auckland on Saturday.