High number of empty balls is already troubling us: Harmanpreet

Gakberha. Captain Harmanpreet Kaur has admitted that India’s inability to rotate strike is a ‘worrying’ sign. He said the team is discussing how to solve the long-standing problem of playing empty balls ahead of the Women’s T20 World Cup semi-finals. India on Monday qualified for the semi-finals of the Women’s T20 World Cup by beating Ireland by five runs using the Duckworth-Lewis method. However, rotating the strike remains a big problem for the Indian team. During the series against Australia in December and again in the tri-series ahead of the T20 World Cup, the team faced problems with rotating the strike.

In the ongoing tournament, India played 51 and 41 empty balls in their Group 2 matches against England and Ireland respectively. Harmanpreet said in the press conference after the match, “The problem of playing empty balls is troubling us.” He said, “We would like to see improvement in this area in the next match. Against England, we played too many empty balls. We are already discussing this problem in the team meeting.

“But sometimes when the other team is bowling very well, 150 is a competitive score on these wickets,” said the skipper. Indian batsmen failed to increase the run rate against Ireland.India were scoring less than seven runs per over but Smriti Mandhana, who got four lives, increased the run rate by playing some attractive shots in the second leg of her innings. Harmanpreet said, “Both teams are always under pressure in World Cup matches. I think if you score 150 runs in these matches, you have the upper hand.

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Playing her 150th T20 International match, Harmanpreet came out to bat at number three but could not score runs at a fast pace and was eventually dismissed for 13 runs. India may have to face five-time winners and title contenders Australia in the semi-finals. Harmanpreet said, “In the end if you win, you feel satisfied but I think in some areas, especially batting, we need to sit and talk about how we want to play in the next match.”