ICC Women’s World Cup 2017: India crushes Pakistan by 95 runs

ICC Women's World Cup-2017

ICC-Women's-World-Cup-2017

It was only a few days back that the Indian men’s cricket team was humbled its Pakistani counterparts even as the likes of Fakhar Zaman, Mohammad Amir, and Hasan Ali blazed a path of glory and the much-vaunted Indian men’s team was left wondering. Now, at the grandest stage of them all in women’s cricket – ICC Women’s World Cup 2017 – India has extracted a revenge of sorts by crushing Pakistan with a huge margin of 95 runs at Derby. The architect of this victory was Ekta Bisht, the left arm spinner for India, who claimed 5 wickets in this crucial game.

A few words on Bisht

From the looks of it, it would seem that Bisht is always in a record-making mood whenever she plays Pakistan. In the last ODI (one day international) game between these two subcontinental rivals she bagged a five for and got past the 50 wicket mark in said form of the game. On July 2 at Derbyshire County Cricket Ground she once again bagged a five for and became the fifth-highest wicket-taker for India in this form of the game. The circumstances of the two games are quite different though. The first game was a World Cup Qualifier that was played in February.

The game was played at Colombo, Sri Lanka which is always a more favourable destination for spinners. In that game Pakistan batted first which meant that Bisht was not operating under any scoreboard pressure as such. Three of the wickets that she took happened to be lower order batters. She gave away only eight runs for those five wickets and also bowled seven maidens. It still remains her best bowling ever. However, the latter performance was perhaps even more crucial given the fact that the team was defending a paltry total of 169.

How did Pakistan fare?

The fact that Pakistan was able to score only 74 in 38.1 overs speaks quite highly of how India bowled in the game. Apart from Bisht there were some contributions by a couple of Indian batters that proved to be key ones in the final context of the game. As a result of this win India has now topped the table with six points from three games. In fact, with this crushing victory India also avenged its loss to Pakistan at an ICC World T20 game that was staged in Delhi during 2016.

In fact, coming into the chase Pakistan had never scored more than 134 while chasing in a 50 over World Cup game. This is why even though the target seemed to be really small at start, there was a possibility that Pakistan could be contained at below that and that is what happened in the end. During her spell Bisht used her arm ball to devastating effect claiming the wickets of Ayesha Zafar, Sidra Nawaz, and Iram Javed in her first over. All the dismissals were identical with the batswomen playing for turn but finding none. Seamers Mansi Joshi (2/9 in 6.1 overs) and Jhulan Goswami (1/12 in 5 overs) gave the team the early jolts that were exploited by Bisht later on.