India Vs England women: Shafali Verma must perform for India to have a smooth win against England
India’s women’s cricket team pulled off a test draw against England’s team thanks to ‘one of a kind’ knocks by Tania Bhatia and Sneh Rana but now they have a 50-over match to pull off to register supremacy over the English side.
Or a convincing ODI victory, the team will rely upon the explosive young batswomen Shafali Verma. After the draw, the team will be confident to take on England as the one day format is one of India’s strengths but having said that, they will expect Verma to perform as she is the one who can push the team for a better momentum during the earlier stages.
The ODI against England will start on Sunday and whoever performs during these three one day matches, will automatically become the first choice for the next years 50-over World Cup. It will however be not easy for the Indian side as they had lost to South Africa earlier this year in both T20s and ODIs.
It will not be beneficial for the team to only rely on Shefali as others like Smriti and Harmanpreet will also have to perform in order to succeed against a relatively more balanced team of England. Even though Mandhana has a good strike rate, she is not very consistent once she gains the momentum.
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If the opening partnership fails, the middle order will crumble in no time as the middle order batswomen have not be nurturnered enough to handle the pressure of batting. Hence, it will be extremely important for the openers to hit the decided mark for the middle order to work more efficiently.
The issue with Mandhana seems to be the pace at which she scores runs and often when she seems to be getting everything right, she loses focus resulting in the team being limited to a total of 250. But now with Shafali in the scene, Smriti will not have to deal with all the pressure as the youngster can contribute to the total in a more explosive manner so Smriti can just focus on being consistent.
Given the power with which Shafali hits, even if she stays off 15 overs, the score board will easily have 70-80 runs and the middle order can take it from there. But apart from her, India has also found immense confidence in Sneh Rana, whose first act itself confused the England team helping the Indians to push for a draw.
Rana brings freshness to the team as she introduces spin in the playing squad. In the test against England, she became the fifth Indian bowler to take a four-wicket haul in the women’s test cricket.
