Women's T20 World Cup: Harmanpreet Kaur's India has directly qualified for the upcoming edition of the T20 World Cup 2024. The Indian women's team recently played in the Women's T20 World Cup in South Africa and will walk into the next edition of the tournament in Bangladesh. Notably, eight teams have earned direct qualification for the tournament and only two spots are up for grabs.
The move comes after India finished inside the top three in the Group stage. As per the qualification process, the top three teams from each Group along with hosts and the highest-ranked team outside of the six automatic qualifiers earn direct qualification in the tournament.
Harmanpreet Kaur in action
In Group 1, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa finished on the top three; while in Group 2, India, England and West Indies were the top three sides. Bangladesh is the host of the next edition, while Pakistan is the next best-ranked team in the rankings as on 27th February 2023. As per ICC's statement, "The remaining two spots will be identified through a Global Qualifier to be held in early 2024. The dates and venues of this tournament will be announced in due course."
"From the teams who played in this year’s tournament, Sri Lanka and Ireland are the teams failing to get a direct qualification. Sri Lanka are currently ranked eighth in the rankings while Ireland are 10th," the statement added.
India women lost the semifinal of the tournament in South Africa. In a match that went right down to the wire, Australia defeated India to enter the final of the Women's T20 World Cup 2023.
Meg Lanning won the toss and decided to bat. Bowling first, India were sloppy on the field. On many occasions, it looked like the Indian women were just going through the motions. Australia went on score 43 off the first six overs. Radha Yadav presented India with the first breakthrough and got rid of Healy. India dropped Mooney and missed a stumping opportunity of Lanning. Both of them went on to score the majority of the runs for Australia. Gardner flourished in the end and powered the team to a daunting total of 172.
Chasing 173, India got off to the worst of the possible starts, losing three quick wickets. Jemimah and Harmanpreet Kaur stitched together a great partnership to get India on course for a stupendous victory., but it went a little downhill from there on. Kaur got out to an unfortunate run-out and Rich Ghosh, who has been in rich form throughout the tournament, followed soon after.
It all came down to Deepti Sharma and Sneh Rana and the equation read 20 of the last 2 overs for India. The pair could only manage 4 runs in the penultimate over and 16, in the end, proved too much for India and the Aussies won the game by 5 runs. Fair to say, India, once again, choked in India because, at the halfway mark, it was their game to lose.
