When India and Australia lock horns with each other in the final of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020, all eyes will be on swashbuckling opener Shafali Verma who has been in prolific form in the tournament and England opener Danielle Wyatt believes the Aussies will come hard against her.
Wyatt, who has shared the dressing room with 16-year-old Verma in 2019 Women’s T20 Challenge, feels the defending champions will imply hard mind games against the Indian to derail her momentum.
“The Aussies have tried to bowl to those areas in the past. You’ve got to play a few mind games with her and hope she spoons one up. When she fails, she’s so hard on herself. I just tell her to relax and that it’s only cricket. It’s obvious what her weaknesses are and Shafali knows what they are,” Wyatt was quoted as saying by IANS.
In all the four matches that India have been part of in the ongoing quadrennial event, Verma has given the team blitzkrieg start in all of them and taken her tally to 161 runs at a blistering strike rate of 161. Her performance at the World Cup has also given her the number one spot in ICC’s T20I batswomen rankings.
Recalling about the time she spent with Verma, Wyatt said the youngster was always the first to go to the nets to face fresh bowlers with extra pace.
“She’d bat for about an hour. She’d say ‘yeah, come bowl’ and go ‘bang, bang.’ And I went ‘who’s that?’ She had an extra 20 minutes to do some drills after. I couldn’t believe she was 15 when someone told me. She knew exactly what she wanted to get out of that session. At aged 15, that’s pretty smart,” Wyatt said.
Verma’s method has a distinctive Indian flavour, recalling at once Virender Sehwag and Virat Kohli. There’s a planted front foot, elastic wrists, head surgically positioned over the ball and bowler whipped wickedly down the ground.
(With IANS inputs)