India @ World Cup 2013

    I wrote about Women's World Cup 2013  in a post few days back. Many people read this post. Interesting thing is most of the visitors were from out of India. It  hardly received any visitor from India. More interesting thing is it received not a single female visitor. That is a pity.
    If I am not wrong India is  a country with largest fan following for Cricket. People here remember records by heart. But same interest is not reflected towards Women's Cricket. And now that India is out of the race for the championship, I doubt that interest will grow sooner. May be by next world cup we will see some changes.
  So, what is the progress card of Indian team:
India played four matches. It started off well when they won their first match against West Indies. We had a century and half century followed by some fantastic bowling performance. But then India lost its track. They lost 2 consecutive matches against England and Srilanka. Defeat against England was acceptable as England come in the tournament as former Champions but Srilankan team is not that strong.
In both matches, our Bowlers performed badly. While batting was not up to the mark against England except for the century of Harmanpreet Kaur, it was pathetic against Srilanka. Against Srilanka's score of 282, the highest scorer of India was Reema Malhotra (38).
  In spite of this India would have made it Super Six, but one great performance against 2 bad ones by West Indies changed the whole scenario.
West Indies lost to India by 105 runs, and they were bundled up for only 101 by England, but they scored a huge 368 against Srilanka. Even the highest scorer from West Indies, Stefanie Taylor (171) scored more than whole of Srilankan team (159).
This huge victory put their run rate much higher than India putting India in the last spot in the group and so out of the race.
 India played their last match just to avoid the embarrassment of being last in the whole set of teams in the series. They defeated Pakistan by 6 wickets with a century by the Captain, Mithali Raj.
With this poor performance, not only it is out of the race for the championship, but also, it will have to play qualifying matches to be able to be a part of next World Cup.
I hope, like Men's team who after a dismal performance in 2007 (loosing out in first round itself), went on to be the World Champions in 2011, Women's team will also rise to clinch the World Cup next time.

Apart from India's poor performance, out of the six teams qualified for the next round, I believe, the strongest contenders are Australia and England. But this being pretty much similar wicket  to their home, Srilanka might turn out to be dark horse in the competition. I don't expect much from West Indies and South Africa, but New Zealand might play the role of party pooper for a strong contender.

Wait and watch, lot of excitement in coming few days.