England captain Heather Knight hopes to replicates Pakistan's CT campaign

England Women’s team captain Heather Knight, after losing to India in their opening game of the tournament, hoped that they would be able to replicate Pakistan’s campaign in the recently concluded Champions Trophy, to keep their expectations upbeat in the ongoing ICC Women’s World Cup.

After winning the toss and electing to field first, Indian batswomen had a field day at Derby as they piled up as many as 281 runs. Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Raut missed out on their tons as they scored 90 and 86 respectively. The final flourish was provided by Mithali Raj, who scored a brisk 71, and cameo of Harmanpreet Kaur.

England in reply never really kept going as they lost wickets at regular intervals. The home team saw a glimmer of hope with the outstanding innings of Fran Wilson who scored a fighting knock of 81. England had only themselves to blame for the loss as they lost four batters in run outs. In the end, the home team was bundled out withing 246 runs and India won the match by a comfortable margin of 35 runs.

Knight expresses her disappointment after the loss

Heather Knight, who scored an appreciable knock of 46, expressed her disappointment post England’s defeat against India. “Definitely disappointed. Pakistan started in a similar way in the Champions Trophy and ended up doing pretty well. We didn’t start well with the ball, we didn’t get our legs right. Credit to India. They punished us for not playing well. They obviously took the game away from us with the bat,” quoted Knight according to Indian Express.

“Really nice to have a good game of cricket but disappointing not to come away with the win. Everytime we got a partnership together, we seemed to lose a wicket. But that’s cricket sometimes.We didn’t quite hit our line and lengths and India punished us for that. They batted very well and made it tricky for us to make the breakthrough and really put the pressure back on our bowlers” conclude the English captain. It still a long way to go for all the teams in the competition as they engage in a round robin league style preliminary round.