Edgbaston| India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur is heartbroken and she has identified team India's repetitive pattern of committing mistakes and crumbling under pressure in crunch matches. Courtesy of the same pattern, India lost to England in the finals of the 2017 World Cup, they crumbled in the 2020 ICC T20I World Cup final against Australia and they repeated the same mistake in the gold medal match of the Commonwealth Cricket Championship.
India was chasing 162 runs and they almost had the game in their kitty with Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet Kaur batting and helping India get through a tough phase. Both Kaur and Rodriguez stitched a partnership of 96 runs and put India in firm control. The Meg Lanning-led side looked completely clueless till the time Kaur and Rodrigues batted. After Jemimah was dismissed, the floodgates opened and the remaining 7 wickets fell just for 34 runs. Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur tried her best and she scored a subline 65 off 43 deliveries in a losing cause. The Indian skipper had a very stern reaction after the game and has said that as a team they need to get rid of this kind of mental block.
"Every time in big finals, we make the same mistakes again and again (with the bat), that is something we have to improve. We don't do these mistakes in the league phase or in bilateral. That is blocking our minds somewhere. I am someone who is always looking for one more batter in the side. Unfortunately, we're working on that. Once we get that, this thing [collapsing] will go away. I know we were close to winning gold, but all around our performance was great. This is the first time we got to play in this tournament and we're happy to have won a silver medal", said Harmanpreet after the match.
Team India required 50 runs in the last six overs with eight wickets in hand but all the Indian batters ended up playing rash shots and India could never recover which cost them the match.
(Inputs from PTI)
