India Women cricket team will be looking to boosting their ICC Women's World T20 2016 playoff hopes by bagging a favourable result against England Women in their third match of the competition Tuesday at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala. The Mithali Raj-led side have a win and a defeat each to their name in the tournament so far.
After a comfortable victory over Bangladesh Women in their opening game, the Indian eves narrowly lost to Pakistan Women via the Duckworth-Lewis method in their following game.
A brilliant bowling performance by Pakistan helped them restrict India to less than 100 runs in 20 overs at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi Saturday. None of the Indian batsmen, including the likes of Vanitha Vellaswamy, Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur or Mithali, could do any trick with their willow on the match day.
However, the Women in Blue got all their courage and determination to bring the fight to Pakistan in the closing stages of the match. Jhulan Goswami, Mithali and the entire fielding unit worked tremendously to put Pakistan under tremendous pressure with just four overs remaining. However, that was when the heavens opened up and we were deprived of a dramatic finish to the game.
And that fight of not getting to finish the business in style is expected to inspire the India Women against England Women.
"We recovered very well later on [against Pakistan Women] and posted a total we could have defended had we got a better start from our bowlers in the first six overs. We definitely don't want to change too many things because it was just one bad day; it doesn't mean we change the whole set-up of the team," Mithali told the ICC Website ahead of the England game.
The English Women will not prove to be an easy task for Mithali Raj and co. The side, led by Charlotte Edwards, got past Bangladesh Women in a convincing fashion in their opening game of the competition. The 36-year-old right-handed batsman scored 60 off 51 balls to play a crucial part in the game for his team and lead from the front in the best way possible.
However, she is aware that India Women will be looking to come back after the bitter loss against arch-rivals Pakistan in their last game and England Women have to take the game very seriously.
"India will be hurting after a defeat against Pakistan," Edwards admitted. "We're going to have to be ready for that. I'm sure they're going to come out a bit more aggressive than they were in the last game. We're not going to take them lightly at all."
Where to watch live
India Women vs England Women is scheduled to start at 3:30 p.m. IST (3 p.m. PKT, 10 a.m. GMT, 6 a.m. EST) March 22.
Viewers in India can catch the game Star Sports 2 and Star Sports HD 2, with online live streaming on Starsports.com and Hotstar.
Viewers in the U.K. can catch the game on Sky Sports 2/HD. Online streaming is available on Sky Go and Watch Sky Sports.
Viewers in the US can tune into Willow TV for the broadcast of the game. Live streaming will be available on Willow TV Youtube.
The live scores can be found on the ICC match centre.
