CHENNAI: Ask anyone who has followed the Indian women's cricket team for a while, and they will tell you exactly where they were on July 20, 2017 — the day India reached the World Cup final for the first time since 2005. It was a momentous occasion for the team as they made it to the final of the global event after 12 years. What followed in the final was one of the early instances of their batting order collapse. From 191/4, India slipped to 219 all out, falling short by nine runs.
Six years after that momentous occasion, India has made it to the knockouts of every single T20 World Cup, falling short every time courtesy some batting collapse. In the recently concluded T20I series against Bangladesh, similar issues have surfaced again. In the first T20I of the tour, India chased down a modest total of 114, largely due to a contribution from Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur. The second T20I saw Mandhana and Kaur depart early and the floodgates opened for the relatively inexperienced Bangladesh bowlers as India lost the next seven wickets for 62 runs. The similar scenes followed in the final T20I on Thursday as they lost five wickets for 11 runs. Except this time, the hosts held their nerve to hand India a four-wicket defeat. India might have sealed the series 2-1, but there are issues they need to address in their middle-order, read after Harmanpreet Kaur, especially on slow surfaces like the one they played this week. That the next T20 World Cup is happening in Bangladesh is all the more reason to act swiftly.