3 Instances when a no-ball cost India in an ICC event

3. 2022 Women’s World Cup 

The Indian Women’s team have had a terrific run in the last few ICC tournaments. They finished as the runners-up in both the 2017 World Cup and 2020 T20 World Cup. A lot was expected from the Women in Blue in the 2022 edition as well. But the team lost an important fixture against South Africa, which led to their ouster from the tournament at the end of the league phase.

The Indian team did quite well to post a total of 274 runs on the board, with the key batters like Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Mithali Raj, and Harmanpreet Kaur providing important contributions. In response, the Proteas women moved steadily to keep up with the required run rate. But the fall of wickets regularly at the back-end of the innings kept the Indian team in contention to reach the semi-finals.

With three needed off two balls, the experienced Mignon Du Preez tried to loft the ball wide of the long-on boundary but was caught by Harmanpreet Kaur off Deepti Sharma’s bowling. Just as the team started celebrating the wicket, the umpires signaled it as no-ball, and both the batters Ismail and Preez took a single off the subsequent balls to seal the game for South Africa.