India beat Bangladesh, keep afloat

Hamilton, March 22

Yastika Bhatia’s gritty half-century and Sneh Rana’s all-round performance powered India to a dominant 110-run win over Bangladesh, keeping the team in the hunt for a semifinals spot at the Women’s World Cup here today.

Opting to bat, India recovered from a mid-innings collapse to post a modest 229 for seven, courtesy an 80-ball 50 by Bhatia and a late flourish from Rana (27 off 23 balls) and Pooja Vastrakar (30 off 33). Defending the total, the spinners, led by Rana (4/30), controlled the proceedings as they struck at regular intervals to choke the Bangladesh line-up. India bowled out Bangladesh for 119 in 40.3 overs to register their third win of the tournament. The big victory helped India improve their net run-rate (0.768) further, and this could prove crucial as the race for a spot in the semifinals nears a climax.

The Mithali Raj-led India will next take on South Africa in their final league match on Sunday. Before that game, if the second-placed South Africa beat West Indies on Thursday, India’s semifinals chances will get brighter.

Bhatia, who has scored back-to-back fifties playing at No. 3, was pleased with her performance. “I would have liked some more runs to contribute to the team, but nevertheless, very happy with the result,” Bhatia, who was adjudged the Player of the Match, said later.

India’s decision to bring in senior spinner Poonam Yadav (1/25) in place of pacer Meghna Singh paid dividends. With Indian spinners operating from both ends on a slow track, Bangladesh struggled to force the pace and were reeling at 69/5 after 25 overs. “For a long time, we’ve always banked on our spinners and we have quality spinners. Today’s surface did help them a lot too,” Raj said.

Lata Mondal (24) and Salma Khatun (32) provided some resistance to India with a 40-run partnership, which was broken by Jhulan Goswami when she dismissed the latter, while Vastrakar accounted for Mondal a few overs later. The pace duo of Goswami (2/19) and Vastrakar (2/26) shared four wickets between them while the spinners accounted for the rest.

Good start, worrying collapse

Earlier, Smriti Mandhana (30) and Shafali Verma (42) shared 74 runs for the opening wicket but Ritu Moni (3/37) and Nahida Akter (2/42) shared five wickets between them to reduce India from 74/0 to 108/4. Bhatia and Richa Ghosh (26) then added 54 runs to take India past the 150-run mark. — PTI

Semis hopes

Best case: Beat South Africa, enter semis

• Australia have qualified for the semifinals, while South Africa, India, England and West Indies are in contention for three spots
• England are expected to reach 8 points after beating Pakistan and Bangladesh in their last 2 matches
• If India beat South Africa in their last match on Sunday, then they’ll reach 8 points and qualify, regardless of other results: Their high net run rate (currently 0.768) would see them through
• Even if India lose to South Africa, they will qualify if South Africa beat West Indies on Thursday. In that case, West Indies and India would remain on 6 points, but WI’s NRR (-0.885) is much inferior to India’s
• New Zealand can also reach 6 points by beating Pakistan, but their NRR is quite poor at -0.229 and they’re practically out

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