Women’s T20 World Cup: Could have won semi-final if I had stayed till the end, says Harmanpreet Kaur

Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur reckons they could have won the T20 World Cup semifinal against Australia at Newlands, Cape Town if she had stayed till the end after suffering a heartbreaking five-run loss. Kaur didn’t have the rub of the green on her side when she got run out as the bat got stuck while she was coming back for the second run.

Kaur was cruising along at 52 from 34 balls and she believes she could have got her team over the line. While chasing a tough target of 173 runs, India found themselves in a pickle at 28-3 after 3.4 overs. However, Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet Kaur were able to hit the ground running to keep the required run rate in check.

The right-handed pair added 69 runs for the fourth wicket before Rodrigues was dismissed while trying to play an uppercut. After Kaur’s dismissal, the onus was on the likes of Deepti Sharma, Sneh Rana, and Richa Ghosh but they could not add the finishing touches.

“If my bat didn’t get stuck, that run would have easily happened. If I had stayed till the last moment, the game would have finished an over before given the momentum we had. But even after that, Deepti Sharma was there, Richa Ghosh was there. I had belief that they could get the job done. If you have seen the matches till now, Richa had batted brilliantly. But after my dismissal, there were seven or eight dot balls and that was the turning point of the match. Otherwise, we had good momentum and things were going well,” said Kaur in the press conference.

The Indian skipper, who recovered from fever before the all-important semifinal clash, admitted her unfortunate run-out was the turning point of the game.

“When I and Jemimah had the partnership, the talk we had was to stay positive and convert the loose balls into boundaries. We needed eight runs off an over from the beginning, so we had that in mind while we were batting. I was getting a good response from Jemimah and she was looking very positive. It feels good when your partner is giving a positive response and you get to learn a lot from the non-striker’s end. The partnership did give us some momentum and we wanted to continue it. But, my run out was a turning point. Otherwise, we were in the hunt because in our mind, if we were able to keep them around 170, we had the batting lineup to chase the score down. The match’s turning point was my run out, as it was going in favor at that moment,” said Kaur.

It was a disappointing result for India as they had the match in their bag in the run-chase. But Women in Blue were poor in the field as they gave reprieves to Beth Mooney and Meg Lanning, which proved to be costly.