India once again fell at the final hurdle as Australia crushed India by a fatal margin of 85 runs at the packed Melbourne Cricket Ground on the ocassion of the Women's Day on Sunday. The home side treated their fans to a fiery brand of cricket and were rewarded with their fifth ICC Women's T20 World Cup.
After being put to bat first, the hosts were off to a flyer and that was it for the visitors as Alyssa Healy completely took the game away from India. However, things could have been different had young Shafali Verma caught her catch in the fourth ball of the innings and that is where perhaps Harmanpreet Kaur's side not only lost their heads but also the game.
"The way we played in the league games was outstanding. Today it was unfortunate that we dropped those catches," said Harmanpreet.
Harmanpreet, who turned 31 today, however, was all praise for her young side and said they can win big things in the future.
"I still have a lot of faith in my team. The upcoming one-and-a-half years is very important. We need to focus, especially in fielding. But I trust this team. It's part of the game, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. You have to keep learning. [The eight day break] Sometimes it does happen, but we spent a lot of time together which is important for us.
"This is part of the game, sometimes you don't get games on schedule. If we talk about the last T20 World Cup, we got to the semis, and this time to the final. I think we're on the right path. Every year we are improving. We just need to think of how we play with focus in the main games," she said.
The 31-year-old also said that she is hoping that there are more games in the Women's T20 Challenge from this year from the four in IPL 2019. This year the number of games have been increased to seven and Harmanpreet hopes this will help the team get more players
"This year we are hoping for some more games in the Women's Challenger, that tournament is very important for us because it is high quality. From there we already got two good players, and hopefully in the upcoming tournaments we can get more," she said.
