CHENNAI: India women's latest defeat — a nine-wicket thrashing at the hands of Australia on Tuesday — has sparked a fresh debate on the contentious topic of Mithali Raj's strike rate. There seem to be two schools of thought: there are some who think that Mithali is being unfairly scrutinised especially when she is the only one contributing consistently, and then there are those who feel that a batter of her calibre cannot be content with half-centuries at middling strike rates.
Ahead of the women's ODI World Cup that is scheduled to be held in March next year, it would be disingenuous to attribute India's problems to Mithali alone. The lack of runs from the others in the middle-order is a bigger concern that needs to be nipped in the bud sooner rather than later. They have often struggled to even get past 250 while batting first, which is nowhere near good enough against teams like Australia.
While former India women's off-spinner Nooshin Al Khadeer agrees that the middle-order must step up, she says that her former India teammate doesn't deserve the criticism that she sometimes gets for her pace of scoring.
"It is very easy to sit back and judge that there is an issue with the strike rate. But as cricketers, we need to realise the situation when she has walked in to bat. I understand strike rate is important, but we need to understand the game situation. We need to understand whether the situation is right to get a strike rate of 100 or 120. If we go through our statistics over a period of time, we can see that our middle-order has not been contributing. If she has a strike rate of 100 but if she is not able to contribute a big score, then there will be criticism of that too," Al Khadeer said during an interaction on Wednesday.
One of the ways that India can begin racking up scores of 270-280 more consistently is if the swashbuckling Shafali Verma fires at the top of the order. The pocket-sized teenager from Rohtak tends to hit the ball a long way, possessing that uncanny ability to dispatch even the good balls for runs. She has been able to adapt quickly to different conditions so far — including Australia where had success during the 2020 T20 World Cup — but opposition bowlers too are more considered in her plans against her. With the surfaces in Australia having more pace and bounce, the Aussie bowlers will not be willing to give Shafali anything in her half and instead test her backfoot game.
Al Khadeer, who played 78 ODIs for India women, believes that Shafali needs to have more options available to her while playing on the backfoot.
"In the first ODI, we saw that the Australian players were bowling short on her body. She needs to be adapting and get her backfoot shots in order. She is a fabulous player and can be destructive. She needs to be working on her backfoot game. If she can do that, she will put the Australians on the backfoot," added Al Khadeer.