In Pooja Vastrakar India trust

The 2024 Women’s T20 World Cup will be played on the slow and spin-friendly surfaces of Bangladesh and a lot of focus is going to be on the tweakers. And India Women have them in abundance. 

India have always relied heavily on their spinners, and the likes of Deepti Sharma, Shreyanka Patil, Radha Yadav and Asha Sobhana will be expected to do the majority of the bowling in the 20-over showpiece event in October. 

While the limelight is largely going to be on India’s formidable spin attack, there’s one bowler, a pacer, whose performance is going to make or break the Women in Blue’s campaign. We are talking about Pooja Vastrakar, who has become India’s lead bowler in the last couple of years. 

That’s right, no other Indian bowler has taken more wickets than Vastrakar since the last T20 World Cup, which was played in South Africa in February 2023. In this period, the right-arm seamer has claimed 23 wickets in 18 innings @ 15.9 and an economy rate of 6.6.

There’s no doubt that Vastrakar’s bowling has improved immensely in these last two years. The 24-year-old has slowly and steadily become an all-phase bowler, which is allowing Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur to rotate her spinners according to match-ups and game situations.

Vastrakar, who made her T20I debut in 2018, operated at an average of 23.4 till 2022, which has dropped to 18.2 in the last 18-19 months. With every single game, Vastrakar is growing in confidence and has become Harmanpreet’s go-to bowler in the 20-over format. 

And following her performance in the three T20Is against South Africa, where she picked up eight wickets at an average of 9.12 and was named Player of the Series, Vastrakar has shown everyone she is more than ready to be India’s premier pacer in the upcoming T20WC.

In the first T20I in Chennai, South Africa amassed 189/4 in their 20 overs but Vastrakar finished with figures of 2/23 in four overs. She was the only Indian bowler to operate at an economy of 9.8. Vastrakar bowled two overs in the powerplay and then came back to bowl two at the end. 

She conceded just three runs in her first two overs and would have even dismissed Laura Wolvaardt if Shreyanka Patil hadn’t dropped a sitter at backward point. Vastrakar bowled with great control with the new ball and as a result, India decided to go without their powerplay specialist Renuka Singh in the second T20I.

That move reflected the management’s faith in Vastrakar and her growing stature. The seamer took 2/37 in the second encounter, which was washed out after the first innings. The pressure was on the home side coming into the third T20I on July 9 (Tuesday), but little did anyone know that Vastrakar was saving her best for the last.

The 24-year-old took 4/13 in 3.1 overs and broke the back of South Africa’s batting line-up. Vastrakar not only registered her best figures for India in the 20-over format but also registered the fourth-best T20I figures for a bowler in India in Women’s T20Is. 

Bowling the first over of the innings to in-form South African openers Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits, Vastrakar went for six runs. Shreyanka got rid of Wolvaardt in the fourth over and Harmanpreet straightaway brought Vastrakar back into the attack in search of another wicket. And the ploy worked, with Vastrakar dismissing the dangerous Marizanne Kapp.

The right-armer set Kapp up beautifully. There were three fuller-length deliveries just outside off and looking at that, Kapp moved a bit towards the off-stump to get closer to the delivery. That’s when Vastrakar brought out some extra pace and hit the back of a length. Kapp went for the heave but was rushed by that extra pace, and ended up mistiming it to the fielder at mid-wicket.

Brits, who came into this encounter at the back of consecutive fifties, fell to Deepti in the eighth over as South Africa were reduced to 45/3. They still had some batting left but that’s when Vastrakar killed the game by striking twice in the 11th over. Anneke Bosch was pinned right in front of the stumps, while Nadine de Klerk was knocked over for a three-ball duck.

The Chennai surface was slightly on the slower side and Vastrakar kept herself in the game by constantly bowling at the stumps. And so did other Indian bowlers. Radha also scalped three wickets before Vastrakar returned to take the final wicket and bundle South Africa out for just 84 runs in 17.1 overs. 

“Wanted to bowl wicket-to-wicket and I try to keep things simple. Getting the new ball is a great opportunity and I also enjoyed the responsibility. The plan was to stick to our strengths and it worked out well as far as the bowlers are concerned,” Vastrakar said after the game. 

Indian openers Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma then got the required runs in just 10.5 overs and levelled the series 1-1. The two hardly had any trouble chasing down the target but that wouldn’t have been possible without Vastrakar’s game-changing spell in the first innings. 

When it comes to bowling, this is the best we have witnessed from Vastrakar and India would hope that the young seamer continues to shine, especially with the T20 World Cup right around the corner. 

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