India vice-captain Smriti Mandhana
Credit: PTI Photo
Dubai: India vice-captain Smriti Mandhana defended her team's ultra-defensive batting approach in a chase of 106 runs against Pakistan which might have greatly dented their chances of reaching the Women's T20 World Cup semi-final.
India struggled to reach the winning target losing four wickets with only seven balls to spare and the entire innings had five boundaries compared to Pakistan's eight. Shafali Varma played 35 balls for her 32 while Jemimah Rodrigues consumed 28 balls while reaching a painstaking 23.
It was skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, whose 29 before getting retired hurt finally guided India to victory.
"A better start with the bat would have been good, but we will take that win," said Mandhana at the post-match presentation ceremony admitting that they "did think about" net run-rate.
Before the Pakistan game, India's NRR was -2.90 and after the win, it has marginally improved to -1.217 which is inferior compared to Pakistan's -0.555.
"Me and Shafali could not time the ball," she was forthright in her admission. "We didn't want to end up losing a lot of wickets. We were a little calculative. The NRR is in our head," she added.
She however couldn't provide a lot of update on Harmanpreet's on-field injury that forced her to retire hurt.
"Too soon to say anything. Medical team is looking at it. Hope it's not too bad," she said.
The next game is against Sri Lanka and Mandhana expects that India will put up a better show than the Asia Cup final, which they lost.
"They have been playing good cricket but this game (against Pakistan) will give us the momentum." Pakistan skipper Fatima Sana felt that her team was 15 runs short from their eventual total of 105 for 8.
"We were not up to the mark in the batting. We were 10-15 runs short."