During the championship match at the Commonwealth Games 2022, the Indian women’s cricket team was defeated by Australia by a score of nine runs.
Harmanpreet Kaur, the captain of India’s women’s national team, expressed her devastation after her team missed out on a gold medal and harped on the need of avoiding making the same mistakes in ‘title fights,’ stating that the “mental barrier” must be overcome moving ahead. In the first-ever competition for women’s cricket at the Commonwealth Games, the Indian team came very close to earning the desired gold medal, but they were ultimately defeated by Australia by nine runs after being in a commanding position. It was like a case of déjà vu for Harmanpreet and the rest of his team, who had experienced a similar collapse in their batting performance after the loss of the T20 World Cup finals against Australia in 2020 and the ODI World Cup final in England in 2017.
After the game on Sunday, Harmanpreet commented on the team’s need to work on their batting technique by saying, “Every time in big finals, we make the same mistakes over and over again (with the bat),” which is something the team has to work on.
“Neither in the league phase nor in the bilateral do we make these kinds of errors. That is preventing us from thinking clearly in some places,” the skipper continued.
India appeared to be on track to win the championship when they required only 50 runs off the last six overs and had eight wickets in hand. However, they lost their last five wickets for only 13 runs because of some bad shot selections.
Both Harmanpreet and Jemimah Rodrigues ended up playing some weak shots as they tried to make their way back to the dugout after putting together a combination that scored 96 runs.
“I am the type of person who always looks for one more batter to put in the side. We regret to inform you that this is something we are working on. Once we have that, this problem [the building collapsing] will no longer exist. “After losing two important wickets, Jemimah Rodrigues and I batted in a manner that was much needed at that time,” she said. You have to learn to control your nerves. We were so close to arriving.” “Perhaps if Pooja (Vastrakar) or I had been there, we might have been able to win the game. But unfortunately, that is just a part of the game; there are some things that you simply cannot control. “There is a lot for us to learn from this,” she continued.
Harmanpreet is “glad and satisfied” with her team’s performance at the CWG, despite the fact that India ultimately came out on the losing side of the summit showdown.
“I am aware that we came very close to winning gold, but I believe that overall, our performance was outstanding. We are thrilled to have been given the opportunity to compete in this competition for the very first time and to have come away with a silver medal.
“A medal is something that people back home will feel inspired from, and it’s possible that they’ll start playing cricket as a result. As a group, we hope to serve as a source of motivation for young women. If you perform well on this stage, you will inspire a great number of people back home. Even though she had a positive test result for COVID-19, all-rounder Tahlia McGrath was still selected to play for Australia.
“They briefed us before the coin was flipped. That was something outside of our sphere of influence. The CWG needed to make a choice, and since she wasn’t in very grave condition, we felt comfortable going forward with the game. It was required of us to demonstrate good sportsmanship.
“I’m glad that we didn’t tell Tahlia that she couldn’t go to the final; I can only imagine how difficult that would have been for her.” India’s energetic performance in the field helped them limit Australia’s score to 161 for 8.
“If you want to defeat this Australian squad, you need to field well,” the coach told his players. If you make it easy for them to score runs, they will easily be able to win the game. During the discussion with the team, we discussed it, and Radha (Yadav) served as an example for us to follow.
