Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Ash Gardner has revealed how Australia turned the pressure back on India to knock them out of the Women’s T20 World Cup. On Sunday, June 28, the Aussies booked their place in the semifinals with a six-wicket win over India at Lord’s Cricket Ground. However, the six-time champions were made to work hard during the chase.
Pursuing 171, Australia needed 99 runs from the last 10 overs, with the required run rate climbing to 10.22 after 11 overs. The asking rate remained above 10 for much of the chase before Australia brought it down to below a run-a-ball with three overs remaining, thanks to a counter-attacking partnership between Gardner and Ellyse Perry.
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India vs Australia, Women’s T20 World Cup: Updates | Scorecard
‘RESPECT GOOD BALLS, PICK BOWLERS TO ATTACK’
Speaking ahead of the semifinal against West Indies, Gardner said Australia’s chase was built on putting the bowlers under pressure from the outset, targeting favourable match-ups and maintaining the required scoring rate by breaking the innings into smaller phases.
Gardner, who smashed a 29-ball 53, added that the team trusted its batting depth, rotated the strike against good deliveries and capitalised on scoring opportunities to stay ahead of the game.
“In T20 cricket, the focus is on breaking things down rather than thinking about the whole over. As a bowler, if you get hit for a boundary in the first couple of balls, you’ve got to win the over back, and sometimes that can be quite tricky.
From a batting perspective, it’s about putting the bowler under pressure straight away and then capitalising on the rest of the over to make it a really big one,” Gardner said in the pre-match press conference.
“When we had no other option but to keep scoring at around 10 an over, we knew exactly what we needed to do. It was about choosing the right ends to target, picking the bowlers to attack, respecting the good balls while rotating the strike, and building on the platform that the batters before us had set. From there, it was about playing to our strengths, knowing we’ve got so much firepower behind us,” Gardner added.
With Australia reeling at 68 for 3, Gardner and Ellyse Perry stitched together a match-defining 100-run partnership for the fourth wicket off just 57 balls to put the six-time champions firmly in control. Shree Charani eventually dismissed Perry for 56, but by then the writing was already on the wall for India.
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
