Women's World Cup: Indians need to be innovative

If India had planned on trying out some new tactics, the match against Sri Lanka was not the right platform. Sri Lanka appeared to have resigned to the fact that they were no match to the Indians and virtually caved in even before they started the run chase.

India has started trying new batting combinations and today's effort paid dividends as Smitha Harikrishna opened the batting with Anju Jain and did a good job of it. So much so that the seasoned opener and her skipper, Anju Jain, were eclipsed by Harikrishna. She scored a brisk 32 off 57 balls and looked confident. But Jain is yet to come to grips with her falling form. She is the most experienced batsman for India and is highly accomplished but has yet to come to grip with the fact that she is the captain, wicket keeper and opening batsman. A deadly combination for any player!

From 59 for 2, India put on the best partnership ever for the third wicket and the second best in the world with the 151-run partnership between Chanderkanta Kaul (80 off 82 balls with 8x4's) and Anjum Chopra (68* off 104 balls). Kaul enjoyed two lives while still on 2 and one more when she was on 59 but she showed the grit to put it behind her and bring up her best score till date in this CricInfo World Cup.

The pair was against some mediocre bowling and the scoring during the middle overs was pedestrian. This aspect needs to be strengthened if India has serious intentions of beating New Zealand in the semi-final. The runs India is getting in the slog overs against weaker bowling attacks may not be possible in the semi-final. Their main thrust should be to keep the score ticking all along and batsmen instructed to rotate the strike from the word go.

Chasing 230 was never going to be easy for Sri Lanka and they appeared to be intimidated by the bowling. But the Indians never took a single step to make things happen but preferred to allow things to happen. This defensive mechanism that appears to have set in will not augur well for them when they take on New Zealand. The field placements were defensive and it looked like Sri Lanka were on the verge of overhauling India's score. But Sri Lanka eventually folded up (mainly due to their own faults), without much effort on the part of Indians, for just 89 runs leaving India victors by a margin of 141 runs!

The Indian bowling did not look penetrative because of the defensive field placements. Roopanjali Shastri again took wickets and now has 11 wickets in the competition leaving her the leading wicket taker amongst the Indians. But she has bowled her full quota of overs only in two games so far leaving one pondering as to the strategy that the Indian management has in mind. May be they have a surprise or two to unleash on the Kiwis to wrest the initiative from them.

It is time to reassess and push Anju Jain down the order to let her have breathing time between innings. She has the best qualifications to bat during the middle overs. The semi-final will be altogether a different cup of tea and Indians appear to be in without a definite plan in the middle. They need to be innovative and upset the rhythm of New Zealand and get into a positive frame of mind if they plan to upset the New Zealand apple cart.

This team has the talent to do so. They only need to motivate themselves and believe in their ability. The Indian think tank seems to have something up their sleeves and if the planning is as good as the talent of the Indians, they are in with a chance of making the final.