India have the balance to end their T20 World Cup wait, but Australia loom

One group game does not win a World Cup, and India have been here before, fizzing out of the blocks only to stall when the prize comes into view. But the way they took apart Pakistan in Birmingham on June 14 was the kind of performance that makes you sit up. The 64-run margin tells you India won comfortably. The shape of the win tells you something more useful: this side has the balance that past India teams, for all their stars, never quite found.

The headline was Smriti Mandhana’s 68, and rightly so. India had slipped to 18 for 2 inside the powerplay, Shafali Verma and Jemimah Rodrigues both gone cheaply, and the innings could have come apart right there. Instead Mandhana dug in, added 91 for the third wicket with her captain Harmanpreet Kaur, and batted India back into control. Harmanpreet made 36, Richa Ghosh chipped in with a brisk 34, and a start that looked like trouble became 170 for 6. That is India’s highest total against Pakistan at a T20 World Cup, and it was built the hard way, from the wreckage of an early wobble rather than a flying powerplay.

The bowling is where this looks serious

If the batting was reassuring, the bowling was the part that should worry the rest of the group. Deepti Sharma finished with five wickets for 10 runs, a spell that turned a winning position into a rout, and Shree Charani announced herself on World Cup debut with 3 for 21 through the middle overs. Pakistan were bowled out for 106, strangled by spin on a surface that offered grip. India have spent years leaning on their top three to paper over a thin attack. On this evidence they no longer have to.

That is the genuine shift. A team that can post a competitive total after losing early wickets and then defend it with bowlers who attack rather than contain is a different proposition from the India side that lost the 2023 semi-final to Australia by five runs, or the one that went out in the group stage in 2024.

The drought that hangs over them

India have never won the Women’s T20 World Cup. They reached the final in 2020 and were beaten by Australia by 85 runs at a packed Melbourne Cricket Ground, and they have made the semi-finals more than once only to come up short. That history is the reason a single win against Pakistan, however emphatic, has to be kept in proportion. The talent has rarely been the question. Closing out the tournament has.

So the temptation to crown them after one match should be resisted. What can be said is that the ingredients look right. Mandhana and Harmanpreet give the order experience, Ghosh offers the late-overs power India have often lacked, and a spin group fronted by Deepti and Charani gives Harmanpreet options she can rotate without fear. That is a contender’s spine.

Australia still set the bar

Here is the catch, and it is a big one. Australia are in the same group, and they opened by dismantling South Africa. They remain the team everyone is chasing, the side that has turned winning these tournaments into a habit, and India will almost certainly have to go through them at some stage. Beating Pakistan proves India are good. Beating Australia would prove they are ready.

Before that there is work to tick off. India face Netherlands at Headingley on June 17, a game they should win and one that should sharpen their net run rate, and the group rolls on from there toward the final at Lord’s on July 5. None of it means much if the old fragility returns under pressure. But for one evening in Birmingham, India looked less like hopefuls and more like a team that believes the wait might finally be ending. The next few weeks will tell us whether that belief is earned.

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