Banking on Smriti Mandhana’s best-ever T20I innings of 87 off 57 balls, Harmanpreet Kaur and company overcame the Irish Challenge by five runs on Monday in Gqeberha, securing their place in the semi-finals set to meet the mighty Australians in Cape Town’s first semi-final on February 23.
2018, 2020, and now 2023, the women in blue in the past three editions have consecutively made it to the semifinals of the T20 Women’s World Cup but have failed to pass the final frontier losing to England and Australia. A perfect mix of experience and young fire, can this be just our time?
“That job will not be easy”- Aakash Chopra
Highlighting the same fact, the former Indian batter hailed Team India for reaching the Women’s T20 World Cup 2023 semifinals. He further predicted that facing the Mag Lanning-led Australia would be an extremely tough task for our ladies.
“Our girls have reached the semi-finals. The problem is that we will have to face Australia. That job will not be easy, we know that. How we will cross that hurdle, we will discuss later but for now, we have reached the semi-finals, which is praiseworthy.” said Aakash Chopra.
‘India can defeat Australia..’
The Australian force has been their usual best, having comfortably reached the semifinals ready to meet the Indians whom they beat in the previous finals at packed the MCG in 2020. The wound is fresh as ever and so is the hurt of the Commonwealth Games finals.
The five-time champion is arguably the finest side in the history of women’s cricket. But if there is one team that has caused them trouble in the past year, it has been to be our women in blue, who handed them their only loss of 2022 ending their 12-match unbeaten streak on their tour to India. Constantly dragging them till the very last ball of the matches, however, that’s where the World Champions triumph throwing the right punch in the crunch situations, as we witnessed in the last home series which they took 4-1.
But as India’s former captain Mithali Raj herself believes, the Indian women ctheming a halt to any storm on there given their if they manage to play their best game, who are we to question, right?
“I believe India can defeat Australia, but for that India needs to step up in the crucial moments,” said Mithali Raj.