CHENNAI: The first surprise came at the toss when India skipper Mithali Raj said that Yastika Bhatia would replace Shafali Verma, their first-choice opener. It seemed like a panicked move. Even though Shafali was averaging just 16 across her last six ODIs, and went without scoring against Pakistan in the first game of the tournament, it looked like the team management pulled the trigger soon.
Shafali’s last five scores read 0, 0, DNB, 9, 0 (including two unofficial games) and her ODI average is 21.66, but she has hardly batted with her partner Smriti Mandhana (four times) in 2022. With Shafali what stands out is the fact that India have often got off to a brisk start in the powerplay whenever she has played. To put things into context, in 12 ODI innings, the 18-year-old had been involved in six 40-plus opening partnerships.
While the change was at least understandable to an extent, the bigger shock that played into New Zealand's hands was the fact that they stacked up Yastika Bhatia, Smriti and Deepti Sharma as the top three.
Now, often when teams bring on off-spin early in the innings against Smriti, Shafali used to take them on to disturb their plans.
On Thursday, however, both Yastika and Smriti struggled to get going against Frances Mackay. With Jess Kerr keeping it tight from the other end, India managed to score just ten runs in five overs. And the pressure got to them as Smriti hit one straight to the cover fielder. At this point, having seen what had happened, it would have made sense for Mithali Raj to come at three, but they persisted with Deepti, another southpaw, allowing the White Ferns to tighten the screws.
Brought in as first change, Lea Tahuhu went around the wicket right away and struck Deepti’s pads, beating her for pace. Mithali walked in at No 4, but India had already gone into a shell.
When Yastika got out to Tahuhu, India were hovering at 50 for three in 19.1 overs. But none of it happened by chance. New Zealand had done their homework and were executing their plans to perfection. Tahuhu said as much after the match.
“Obviously we played India in one T20I and five ODIs leading into the series, so we had a bit of information about that. So, there's always a lot of work going on behind the scenes, especially with the likes of Sophie (Devine), Suzie (Bates) and Amy (Satterthwaite), sort of, put their three wise heads together and then come up with some plans for us,” she said.
It’s not just the batting order that was bewildering. Against Amelia Kerr, who's largely known for her googly rather than leg-spinner, Indian batters played for deliveries that turned away from them, losing three wickets to her. With the ball, too, some of the tactics like keeping Deepti for the last 15 or not bringing Pooja Vastrakar earlier failed to make sense as Amelia and Amy were milking the other bowlers.
With just a day to go ahead of their next match against West Indies, the Indian think-tank would want to take a hard look at their selections and game plan, especially playing three lefties at top against a team that has three top offies in Anisa Mohammad, Hayley Matthews and Stafanie Taylor.
All said and done, India need not panic as they have won one out of two and still have five games to go. They would want to keep the morale up and turn things around quickly.
Brief scores: New Zealand 260/9 in 50 ovs (Amy Satterthwaite 75; Vastrakar 4/31) bt India 198 all out in 46.4 ovs (Harmanpreet Kaur 71; Lea Tahuhu 3/17)