A Fantastic Tournament

I was not able to watch much of the Women’s World Cup ’17. I watched only about 7-8 games of a languid tournament spread over a period of a month. Luckily though, I happened to see some of the most thrilling encounters. I saw Pakistan take on South Africa and defend a modest target with a lot of heart, applying the skid breaks to the South African innings and almost making them trip before they somehow escaped. I saw England; having fallen in their opening encounter against India, slay everyone in their sights till they met Australia. The two sides produced a last-ball thriller, with Australia managing 2 runs when 6 were needed. England then went on to beat South Africa in another nail-biter in the semis; where the lower order batting helped them overhaul a seemingly gettable but ultimately tough target.

And then, there was the great final. In such tournaments, knockout games are rarely as thrilling and some of the best cricket is often played in the group stages, when there is less at stake and when it is easier to throw caution to the wind. Final games are often found guilty of promising much more than they deliver. Usually, a team could get overwhelmed by the occasion and fail to turn up or another could stamp its class with such force that the game peters out. But the two finalists here were in some mood. The twists and turns produced for a fine contest which could have gone either way till the last ball was bowled. It is difficult to find a game in recent memory to rival this final, in its number of moments where the momentum seemed to shift from one team to another.

England’s slow and steady start, the fall of wickets after the 14^th over, then the partnership between Sarah Taylor and Nat Sciver, the counter-burst from Jhulan Goswami to leave England reeling around the 40-over mark and the final push from the gutsy lower-order pairing of Katherine Brunt and Jenny Gunn. 228 seemed below par but it was the final and India were up against it. And yet Punam Raut and Harmanpreet Kaur put them in control. Kaur, when asked to knuckle down in pursuit of a tricky chase, responded brilliantly and till she was in the middle India looked good. Even after she fell, Veda Krishnamurthy took India within 38 runs of the trophy with Raut still giving company.

But that’s when the game went bonkers. India lost 4 wickets in the space of 10 runs; the last of them Jhulan Goswami, castled by a ramrod straighter one. Running out of batting partners, Deepti Sharma started to counter-attack to bring India within a sniff of getting the target into single digits. Pandey’s run-out was perhaps the decisive turning point of the game though there was still Gunn’s baffling drop to give Poonam Yadav a life. On another night, it could’ve left her with a lifelong scar but Anya Shrubsole was so consistent with her straigther deliveries that it hardly mattered.

It is safe to say that the Women’s World Cup was supposed to be a rather less attractive cousin of the Champions Trophy, staged in the same surroundings just a few weeks earlier. If you are to compare the tournaments in terms of advertising revenues and gate receipts, it will be a no contest. But there should be no doubt about which of the two tournaments produced better contests on the field. There were some great teams on display in the Women’s World Cup, including England and India, but surely the bigger theme here was the coming of age of a tournament. The women have produced quite the party.