“Today the first 40 overs were really good and in the last 10 we were not executing well. In matches these things are going to happen, we are not going to be 100% all the time but it’s very important how you come back.”
“Look, in my opinion, the finish is very important in a cricket game,” Muzumdar said at the press conference. “I always say, even in this dressing room, that yes, we need a good start, but we need a better finish. So, if you see the finish that we had in the South Africa game, as far as bowling is concerned in the last five overs, we ended up losing that game. And, even today, basically, if we would have got another 20 runs, maybe things would have been different. But, at the same time, it’s been a gradual progress for us. And there are a lot of learnings. I keep talking about positives and learnings. One of the things to learn is to finish well.”
India have struggled to defend competitive totals in their last two games, losing both with seven and six balls remaining. They have played these games with only five bowlers in batting-friendly conditions. Their next match against England is in Indore, which tends to offer plenty of runs as well. Will India look to bolster their attack?
“Obviously, after this game, we will have a look at it,” Muzumdar said. “I am sure the team management will have a proper discussion about this and then we will take a right call as we approach the next game. I am sure about that.”
“We’ll sit and discuss [about five bowlers] because this combination has given us a lot of success in the past,” she said. “Two bad games are not going to make a big difference for us. Going forward there are a lot of things we need to sort it out and hopefully we’ll come up with the best approach.”
Harmanpreet Kaur on India’s five-bowler approach
Harmanpreet, however, did not sound too keen to change India’s combination which has five frontline batters, a wicketkeeper-batter, three allrounders and two frontline bowlers.
“We’ll sit and discuss [about five bowlers] because this combination has given us a lot of success in the past,” she said. “Two bad games are not going to make a big difference for us. Going forward there are a lot of things we need to sort it out and hopefully we’ll come up with the best approach.”
One of the other issues for India, compared to teams that have been doing better, is their consumption of dot balls. It was a much larger issue in their first three games of the World Cup before they addressed it against Australia where five of their top seven had strike rates in excess of 100.
“Well, to be honest, after the previous game, we had an elongated discussion about how we are going to approach the batting innings,” Muzumdar said. “That was one of the things that was discussed about the dot-ball percentage. So far, in the last year-and-a-half, we have been playing very aggressive cricket. I thought today was a good display. Yes, the dot-ball percentage has come down. But, we will have a closer look at it, I don’t know what the percentage is (48% against Australia), but we would like to get it down.”
