CHENNAI: A couple of days ago Australia women’s team dropped Ellyse Perry, their senior all-rounder and ICC Player of the decade, for the first T20I against England. The longstanding issue has been Perry’s strike rate in the shortest format and whether they will drop a player of her stature. But, they did. Closer home, India skipper Mithali Raj’s strike rate in ODIs has been up for discussion through the course of 2021. Although she averaged over 60 last year, her strike rate was 66.71. However, it is hard to argue that India could take Australia’s route at this point in time as the fact of the matter is that Mithali is the only Indian to score over 500 runs last year.
Which is why, the 39-year-old wasn’t far off when she said that the top-order should shoulder more responsibility to bat through the innings.”It's important that the top order, one of them, takes the responsibility of playing through the innings and there has to be a partnership or two of 50... that way we would be able to score 250-270," said Mithali during the pre-departure press conference on Sunday.
When asked about the dot ball percentage, and their middle over run rate in Australia during their pre-departure press conference, Mithali responded, "I think too much importance isn't given to strike rate by you all?,” before adding, “because it is always spoken when it comes to batting or putting up big totals. I just wanted to know if you all only follow the strike rates of the India players or the players from the other teams, because if you might give me an opportunity to enlighten, the Australia series itself, the game that Australia won, the decider (the second ODI), if you've seen Beth Mooney, who scored her 50 in 80-odd balls, but she went on to play a match-winning innings for the team.”
She went on to say that cricket is a game played on situations. “So yes, when we have to score 250-270, we need to have a healthy strike rate, but having said that, we will not only entirely focus on strike rate. Sometimes you have to play fast, but sometimes you have to play to get your team out of the hole too."
And more often than not, the latter has been the case for India in the last 12 months. In eight out of ten innings she batted last year, Mithali had to walk in within first 16 overs, thrice in the first ten. And for the better part of the England and Australia series, vice-captain Harmanpreet Kaur was out due to injury. However, with a fully fit in-form Kaur back in the team and the promise shown by Yastika Bhatia, one would be hoping that Mithali will be able to score more proactively in New Zealand.
As far Kaur’s poor run in ODIs, head coach Ramesh Powar said the star all-rounder — who was the difference between India and Australia in the 2017 World Cup semifinal — was the player of the tournament in the Women’s Big Bash League, adding, “so, currently she's in good form and it's up to her to capitalise those good days into best days in the World Cup."
India will play five ODIs and one T20I against New Zealand in February before starting their World Cup campaign against Pakistan on March 6.