- Indian women reaching the finals of World Cup
When Indian women reached England for the World Cup in June and July this year, nobody gave them a chance to qualify for the finals. Mithali Raj led side surprised with a stunning performance in the opening match defeating hosts England by 35 runs at Derby Ground on 24th June.
Indian team won their next three matches against West Indies, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka easily. In the next two matches against South Africa and Australia, India lost both of the matches. With do or die match against New Zealand, Mithali Raj team showed great fighting spirit and won the match by a big margin. In the semi-finals, Harmanpreet Singh played one of the best innings of her life scoring 171 and helped team India reach the finals for the second time.
In the finals, the Indian team could not handle pressure and lost the match by a small margin of 9 runs at iconic, Lords Cricket ground. This is the best performance by an Indian women’s team in World history. Mithali Raj led from the front scoring 409 runs. Also, she became the first women cricketer to score 6000 runs. Punam Raut, Harmanpreet Kaur, Deepti Sharma performed brilliantly with the bat.
