Plenty has been said about Charlie Dean’s run-out by Deepti Sharma in the final Women’s ODI at Lord’s last Saturday. Plenty more will be said about it. It is not every day that you get to see, in international cricket, a non-striker getting out for backing up too much.
On the eve of the Asia Cup, India’s captain Harmanpreet Kaur feels it is time to move on, though. To a question about the latest controversy involving the incident — England skipper Heather Knight (she missed the India series after undergoing a hip surgery) tweeted that India was lying about the warning given to Dean — Harmanpreet said: “We had noticed during the last couple of games that Dean was taking long strides (from the non-striking end) and was taking advantage. It was Deepti’s awareness (that resulted in the run-out).
“We were discussing these things but it wasn’t in our plans to get her out like that. Everybody is there to win the game. Whenever you are on the ground, you want to win at any cost. It is important to play within the rules. Whatever we did was within the rules. There have been too many discussions and now we want to move on.”
India is moving on to the next challenge — the Women’s Asia Cup, which starts at Sylhet (Bangladesh) on Saturday. The Women in Blue will meet Sri Lanka on the opening day.
Harmanpreet thinks the tournament will help India prepare for the T20 World Cup to be held in South Africa in February. “Our first target will be to give enough chances to the players,” she said. “There are lots of areas we want to work on, like using up the first six overs. We will also try to shuffle the batting order.”
After the Sri Lanka match, India will play Malaysia (October 3), UAE (October 4), Pakistan (October 7), Bangladesh (October 8) and Thailand (October 10). The semifinals are scheduled for October 13 and the final will be played on October 15.
