India will start its marketing campaign in opposition to arch-rivals Pakistan on Sunday. The group has come agonisingly near the title twice, ending runners-up to Australia in 2005 and to England in 2017. A take a look at how India are positioned going into the event and why the ladies’s sport deserves extra consideration:

1. Counting favourites

Heading into the competitors, India’s kind leaves lots to be desired. The group was virtually unstoppable for 2 years after the 2017 World Cup, however a current dip in kind is a trigger for concern. It has misplaced all three of its abroad bilateral sequence since final yr. Moreover, in New Zealand, the place the World Cup is being performed, the group has received solely 40% of its matches and India misplaced an ODI sequence final month.

Six-time champions Australia are a agency favorite, having received 31 of their 33 matches for the reason that final World Cup, together with a whitewash of New Zealand. England, the defending champions, and South Africa are additionally strong, with only one loss in bilateral sequence since final yr. Hosts New Zealand look shaky based mostly on their current kind, although their sequence victory in opposition to India and the house benefit may give them confidence.

India faces a stiff problem from Australia and England within the round-robin stage.

2. Key gamers

While India’s batting is experience-heavy with the likes of Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana, the tempo bowling assault is comparatively inexperienced. Apart from Jhulan Goswami, who has performed 195 matches, the remainder of the quicks have performed a mixed 20 ODIs.

The group will then rely extra on spinners, who carry sufficient expertise to the desk: Deepti Sharma has picked up probably the most wickets amongst spinners in New Zealand for the reason that final World Cup.

While the situations in New Zealand have historically favoured pacers barely greater than the spinners, the latter have additionally been among the many wickets in the previous couple of years. India will hope that its younger tempo assault takes benefit of the situations.

The South African bowling assault is among the many strongest. Its tempo spearhead Shabnim Ismail and Ayabonga Khaka are among the many high 5 wicket-takers for the reason that final World Cup. The all-round assaults of Australia and England can even be beneath the highlight.

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3. Legends at play

This World Cup may effectively be the final for 2 of India’s most prolific gamers: Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami, each of whom can be 42 by the subsequent version. Raj, the skipper, has represented India in each World Cup version since 2000, the one participant on this event with that feat. She additionally led India in each its finals. With 11 scores of above 50 together with two centuries in World Cup matches, she is second solely to New Zealand’s former skipper Debbie Hockley. Raj additionally lately grew to become the primary batter to attain 7,500 runs within the format.

Goswami can be within the twilight of her profession. In her 29 World Cup appearances for India since 2005, she has picked up 36 wickets, the third-highest for a bowler. She additionally has 245 ODI wickets to her title, the very best by a far margin.

Both gamers will look to finish their World Cup journey with a victory ultimately.

4. Prize inequity

Only final week, the US girls’s soccer group received the precise to equal pay because the nation’s males’s aspect. Despite the ladies’s aspect being extra profitable on the world stage than the lads’s group, that they had battled for pay fairness for a number of years. Gender pay parity in all of the 4 Grand Slam tennis occasions was achieved solely lately. ICC cricket occasions are removed from that—and the upcoming World Cup is a stark reminder.

The winner will take dwelling $1.32 million, a 3rd of the quantity the England males’s group acquired three years in the past as their World Cup prize cash. It falls in need of even the $1.6 million the champion of the 2021 males’s T20 World Cup acquired. This is regardless of a doubling in prize cash for the reason that 2017 event. This reveals that regardless of their exploits on the sector and rising recognition, the enterprise of cricket treats girls’s groups unequally.

5. Less sport time

Since 2017, the Indian girls’s group has featured in 60 ODIs. Between August 2017 and March 2021, the group received seven of its eight bilateral sequence, together with 4 abroad: in South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and West Indies. This interval additionally noticed milestones reminiscent of Jhulan Goswami’s 200 ODI wickets and Mithali Raj’s 7,000 ODI runs.

However, this all is alarmingly in need of the 90 matches the lads’s group has performed in the identical interval, getting probabilities to say information and staking declare to larger monetary would possibly. Across all top-ranked groups, girls have performed fewer video games than males.

As the ladies’s sport features recognition in India, clamour for a girls’s Indian Premier League has obtained louder. The BCCI, the richest cricket physique, says it has plans for a full-fledged girls’s IPL in 2023. Such home leagues for ladies and men alike are already performed in England and Australia. It’s time for India to start out one in order that its girls cricketers get their due.

Tauseef Shahidi contributed to this piece