(Cricket news) India were defeated by Australia in the opening match of the 2022 Commonwealth Games Women's T20 Cricket event. Australia won the match by 3 wickets with an over to spare. In hindsight losing a match after playing well against the World Champions isn't too disappointing from India's point of view but the nature of the loss is very disappointing indeed for India. After winning the toss and electing to bat first, India surprisingly announced an XI with only two seamers in English conditions. There were two left arm spinners and two off spinners in the XI which is very risky. Sneh Rana who has been an excellent all-rounder for India recently was left on the bench. 

Both the openers played good knocks while skipper Harmanpreet Kaur led from the front with a 34 ball 52. The rest of the middle order couldn't make significant contributions and India fell at least 20 runs short in the end. Yastika Bhatia, Jemimah Rodrigues and Harleen Deol all struggled to get going as India could only manage 154/8 in 20 overs. Apart from Mandhana, Verma and Kaur, none of the other batters are quintessential big hitters as such. One batter who can strike the ball hard is Richa Ghosh who is just a stand-by player. India needed to be more aggressive with their approach while batting considering the depth of Australia's batting which they couldn't do.

India got off to a flying start in the second innings. Renuka Thakur took the wickets of Alyssa Healy, Beth Mooney, Meg Lanning and Tahlia McGrath. Thakur finished her four overs on the trott with the figures of 4/18. Australia at one point were 49 for 5 in 7.2 overs but then India failed to stop them. Ashleigh Gardner scored an unbeaten 52 off 35 balls to lead Australia to victory. She was supported by Grace Harris who got 37 off 20 balls and Alana King who scored 18 off 16 balls. Australia have a lot of batting depth due to which they can win games even after a batting collapse. 

Australia were always favourites to win the match but India's bowling and fielding was very disappointing. Apart from Thakur, all the other bowlers leaked too many runs and not playing a 3rd seamer cost the team dearly. India's fielding has always been a problem as they tend to allow simple singles and doubles without putting too much pressure on the batters. India's next match is against Pakistan and Ramesh Powar will be hoping to see a much more clinical performance. 

Also read: India get convincing win to go 1-0 up in the T20 series against West Indies