After two weeks of action, the ICC Women's T20 World Cup is set to end exactly how it began: with an India - Australia clash. Even with the lack of reserve days creating controversy, it is well accepted that these two teams were easily the best in the tournament. It is only fitting that they fight it out for the final title at Melbourne.
This will be the fifth clash between India Women and Australia Women in T20Is in 2020. Right from the tri-series before the World Cup, the teams have been locking horns far too often and both will have a fair idea of the dressing room discussions and drawing board plans by now.
The team that decodes the other's strategies better might just have an edge as the finals get underway on Sunday. Here we take a glance at what each side's pin-up board might look like ahead of the big summit clash.
India strategy
The defensive powerplay with the ball
India Women have a set template to their winning run to the finals that involves batting first and setting up par totals for the bowling unit to take over and choke opponents. The interesting bit here is that they do not try and attack too early with the ball. Rather, they are defensive and look to minimise the powerplay impact for batting teams before weaving a web around them with their spinners.
In all of the four matches India played, they leaked less than six runs per over in the powerplay. Except in one match - against New Zealand - they never picked up more than one wicket in this phase.
The template for the final could be pretty similar. Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney are good powerplay batters and seek to start off with a bang. They were denied this luxury at Sydney in the tournament opener and India will know they need to start off on a similar note yet again. This applies even if India are bowling first as they will not want to overly attack and leak runs early, thereby negating the effect of their spinners in the middle overs.
The Poonam Yadav factor
In the first two matches of the World Cup, Poonam Yadav wasn't brought on until at least the ninth over of the bowling innings. India's strategy was to restrict teams until Poonam arrives and then unleash her to fetch wickets. Teams were left with no choice but to attack her to either chase totals down or get to a decent first innings score. It worked in the diminutive leg-spinner's favour as she is most dangerous when batters go after her.
Poonam Yadav has spun a web around the batters and is the joint leading wicket-taker so far (alongside Australia’s Megan Schutt) with nine wickets. AP
However, in the final two games against New Zealand and Sri Lanka, Poonam was on immediately after the powerplay. If it was a plausible ploy to attack more after two early wickets against the White Ferns, it was a case of stopping the Lankans who had started off well in the next game.
Poonam's point of entry to the bowling attack
Vs Australia - 10th over
Vs Bangladesh - 9th over
Vs New Zealand - 7th over
Vs Sri Lanka - 7th over
However, bringing Poonam on early could backfire against a team that bats as deep as Australia. If her overs are split up as widely as in the last two league games, Australia have batters smart enough to take on other bowlers and milk Poonam by rotating the strike. India will want to delay Poonam's entry to the bowling attack and stifle the run-flow of the Aussies until then.
The Mandhana-Shafali role and the middle-order
India have a rather unique batting setup. They are made to look top-heavy due to the daunting presence of Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana at the top. While the experienced southpaw, Mandhana, has been woefully out of touch, Shafali has made up for it with quick runs at the top.
The game plan for them is pretty simple: look to maximise the powerplays and get the side off to a rollicking start. This is critical in the current setup where even skipper Harmanpreet Kaur is out of form. India have a soft batting belly and unless they have a good platform from the top-order, big totals are near-impossible.
In each of the four league games, India scored more runs than they leaked in the powerplays. In fact, they scored 45 or more runs in the first six overs in each of the four completed matches so far.
While this has come at the risk of losing wickets early, it has been worth it because the middle-order then does not have to go out of their way to attack. With Kaur out of touch, Veda Krishnamurthy, Taniya Bhatia and Deepti Sharma are tasked with middle-order duties and none of them are big-hitters.
India's success has stemmed from the fact that they haven't aimed to make them big-hitters or score massive totals. Aiming low has worked for them so far and critical to this plot is the start the openers give them.
Australia strategy
Starting quick and mellowing down
Alyssa Healy - Beth Mooney are among the most successful opening pairs in Women's T20Is in the last few months. They have a one-two rhythm to their batting and score at a frenetic pace in the powerplay to set the tone of the innings. Imperatively, one of them carries on and makes a bigger score. This template has, however, been rather inconsistent in the World Cup so far.
Despite the two being the highest run-scorers for Australia this World Cup with 181 (Mooney) and 161 (Healy) runs respectively, the starts haven't been as good as it used to be. In three of the five matches, they failed to score over 40 in the first powerplay.
This is unlike them for they score at a rate of 8.14 as an opening pair in T20Is since 2019. In four of the five matches, Australia have also lost a wicket at least inside the first six overs.
Crucial to Australia's chances will be how Mooney and Healy counter India's plan of restricting the scoring rate early. With the spinners taking over completely after the powerplay, it is up to the openers to thwart India's plans and score quickly early on.
Spin from both ends to contain Shafali?
Shafali Verma has the best batting strike rate in this World Cup by a large distance - 161.0 compared to 149.21 for the next best. The 16-year old has been pivotal in giving India rousing starts with the bat inside the powerplays and her antics have left opposition sides drained by the time the first six overs are done.
But there's perhaps a chink in her armour that Australia will want to exploit: spin in the powerplays. Australia did start off with Molly Strano in the first game of the tournament against India and it might well have been a planned strategy to counter her weakness against off-spin, one that Hayley Matthews exposed.
Shafali has been dismissed by spinners on just six occasions as against 10 times by pacers. Dig in a bit deeper and we see that of her 9 dismissals in the range of scores 0-19 (when her innings isn't yet in full flow), four are to spin and four are to pace bowlers who bowl at good pace - Shabnam Ismail and Tayla Vlaemnick.
Australia don't have Vlaemnick and there's no one who bowls with that extra zip. But they do have effective spinners in Jess Jonassen, Georgia Wareham and Sophie Molineux. They might want to ponder bowling one of the left-arm spinners, if not both in tandem, in the powerplay overs to Shafali. Bringing Strano in for Molineux and starting off with her alongside Jonassen might also not be a bad move.
The tricky halfway stage
Twice in this World Cup, Australia have lost a good head start by struggling to score after the halfway mark. Against India in the first game, they scored nine runs off Poonam Yadav's first over but lost a wicket too and made just 15 runs in the next four overs. This came after 67 runs were made in the first 10 overs of the innings.
The trend repeated itself against South Africa in the semi-finals and it nearly led them out of the tournament. From overs 9 to 14, Australia, inexplicably, made just 18 runs as four different bowlers were used to keep them silent.
A slip up of this sort against India could cost them the finals, particularly with no Ellyse Perry to salvage the ruins. The halfway mark is when Poonam operates alongside Shikha Pandey or Rajeshwari Gayakwad and boundary-scoring opportunities are few and far between. But Australia might want to take that extra care to keep the scoreboard ticking during this phase even if they aren't looking to score big.
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