After Derby, Cape Town and Sharjah, what will Harmanpreet vs Australia bring us this time?

When Harmanpreet Kaur tore Australia's bowling apart with a sensational unbeaten 171 off 115 balls in the Derby semi-final of the 2017 World Cup, she did more than win India a match. She tore a hole in Australia's cloak of invincibility. It remains one of the greatest innings ever played in a knockout game, and it marked the turning point of women's cricket in India.

That innings even changed Australia a little bit.

"Look, I've forgotten a lot about the game, but you guys are pretty, pretty good at putting it on the telly at every opportunity possible, so it brings back the memory a little bit," Alyssa Healy said before Australia's league-stage meeting with India at this World Cup. "But we've spoken a lot about how it's just drove us to rethink our standards and the way we wanted to approach our cricket. It made us rethink what we were doing and how we could do it better. And I think we've been really successful since that point."

It isn't surprising, then, that whenever India and Australia have met in a global tournament since that day, one question has always hung in the air: what will Harmanpreet do this time?

Eight years on, that question still defines her. Between Derby and Thursday's semi-final in Navi Mumbai, the journey of Harmanpreet and India in World Cups has been one of agonising near-misses. Whenever these have involved Australia, Harmanpreet has been front and centre.

In the T20 World Cup semi-final in Cape Town, her 52 was set to become a career-defining innings, as she batted through illness and set India up for what looked like a famous chase. All until a freak run-out with her bat stuck in the pitch. At the post-match presentation, Harmanpreet wore sunglasses to hide her tears.

Then came Sharjah, October 2024, where India met Australia again, this time with a semi-final berth hanging in the balance. Batting on 52 with India needing 14, Harmanpreet nudged a single off the first ball of the final over, and watched helplessly as four wickets tumbled in the next five balls. India had fallen short once more.

In the years since that 171*, Harmanpreet has remained an exceptional ODI batter, averaging 38.73 and striking at 85.71 - both improvements on her career figures - while scoring five hundreds and 13 fifties in 80 innings. Yet, the conversation almost always circles back to Australia, against whom she seems to reserve her most memorable performances in ICC tournaments. She has scored more runs against them than any other opposition in both ODI and T20 World Cups, but Derby only showed how rare it is for one player to bend a result to her will. Since that match, India have won only two of their seven matches against Australia in ICC events.

Leadership has added another layer to Harmanpreet's story. Since taking over as India's full-time white-ball captain in 2022, she has led the team through a transition from a group of bright but incomplete parts to one with more battle-hardened depth than ever, but for whom the ultimate prize has always seemed just out of reach.

That prize is now two games away.

This World Cup has been a patchy one for India, who stumbled to three successive losses after a bright start, all of them tight and therefore viewed from outside as avoidable and indicative of tactical and temperamental cracks. Questions arose over the team's balance. Harmanpreet's own form was up-and-down, intensifying the scrutiny around her decision-making. Her dismissals seemed like opportunities lost, particularly the late dab straight to short third, on 70, at a pivotal moment of India's chase against England.

But India are in the semi-finals now, and the sense of occasion feels heavier than ever. Here is another shot at breaking free of a cycle of close losses, this time in a home World Cup. For Harmanpreet, now 36, this could well be the final ODI World Cup. And perhaps the final World Cup showdown with the opposition that has defined her legacy.

It's India vs Australia, and the eternal question hangs in the air once more: what will Harmanpreet do?