India skipper Harmanpreet says Colombo pitch wasn't "easy to bat on"; points out areas for improvement

Colombo [Sri Lanka], October 6 (ANI): Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur was delighted about India notching up their second straight win at the Women's World Cup in Colombo on Sunday. She described the thumping 88-run victory over arch-rival Pakistan as an "important game for all of us" that held a fair share of ripples.

India's lower order once again came to the rescue after Richa Ghosh played a blistering 20-ball 35* run cameo. Her belligerent strokeplay towards the end powered India to a competitive 247, from a point where the Harmanpreet-led side was struggling at 203/7.

Before Richa applied the finishing touches, Pratika Rawal (31), Harleen Deol (46) and Jemimah Rodrigues (32) anchored the innings, which kept the scoreboarding ticking. Kranti Gaud, a 22-year-old Indian speedster, was adjudged Player of the Match for her figures of 3/20, which included the wickets of Sadaf Shamas and Aliya Riyaz inside the first ten overs. Her sizzling opening spell put Pakistan on the back foot.

"To be honest, it wasn't an easy pitch to bat. We just wanted to bat longer and see how many runs we can get. When we played here in the tri-series [in May], the pitches were different. But with the rain over the last two days, there was a bit of a hold on the pitch. The key was to keep wickets in the end so that we could execute," Harmanpreet said in the post-match presentation.

While Richa played a starring role with the bat, the rest of the night took a drastic turn when she turned up with gloves. While keeping the wickets, she dropped a staggering four catches and made a couple of judgment errors with the DRS calls. Even during the ODI series against Australia during the buildup to the tournament, Richa was culpable for spilling three chances.

Apart from Richa's nightmare with the gloves, a couple of misfield errors allowed a couple of boundaries, which summed up India's sloppy fielding effort. Harmanpreet was quick to highlight fielding as the area that India needs to address quickly before facing South Africa and Australia on Thursday and Sunday, respectively.

"We let ourselves down on the field, we got so many chances which we unfortunately dropped, but in the end, when you win, you feel happy. There are a lot of areas to work on, but right now I'm happy that we won this game. We just want to go with that momentum. We go back to India now, where we know how the pitches will play. Let's see what the best combination is that we can come up with and how we can improve day by day," Harmanpreet added.

Pakistan captain Fatima Sana felt her side conceded a couple too many runs at the beginning and towards the end of the first innings, which led to their downfall. Despite a dreadful performance from Pakistan's batters, which saw them garner 25 runs in the powerplay at the cost of two wickets and eventually bundle out on 159 in 43 overs, Fatima remains hopeful about a better outing in future.

"In the powerplay, we gave a lot of runs. In the death overs, we also lost some extra runs. When I bowled, it felt like it was seaming. If we had restricted them to under 200, it would've been a good total for us. I still believe that today's batting lineup was good because they are pure batters in the top five. They need to step up. Just need to explore yourself because in batting, we need long partnerships. Have to assess conditions and adapt to it," Fatima said after the match. (ANI)

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