Navi Mumbai: Australia coach Shelley Nitschke felt it was a level-playing field going into the all-important ICC Women’s World Cup semifinal against India at the DY Patil Stadium, here on Thursday.
“I think semifinals are anyone’s games so I don’t think we look at things as underdogs or favourites, we are looking at it as a level playing field. It promises to be an exciting match and a tough contest. If we hold our nerve in the pressure, then we should be successful.”
Talking about Australia skipper Alyssa Healy’s availability for the match tomorrow, Shelley felt a call would be made on the morning of the game.
“As for skipper, she needs to make a call on her availability tomorrow.”
Elaborating on Australia’s preparation for the World Cup, Shelley revealed being in India well ahead of the championship has helped them.
“We’ve been here for 6-7 weeks now. So we’ve played some good cricket for a while now and we had a good session yesterday at DY to get a hang of things and conditions and tonight as well. That’s going to be beneficial for us. We are refining and getting used to the new conditions now,” she added.
When asked if the absence of in-form opener Pratika Rawal in the crucial semifinal clash will be a relief, Shelley replied in the negative.
“I think they’ve got a lot of depth in their team and they’ve got a great partnership between Rawal and Smriti so it mixes up things for them with her not being there. But they’ve certainly got a great deal of depth so I don’t see it as a relief. We have to be ready for whatever opening combination they put out there.”
Tahlia McGrath hasn’t had the best of tournaments and coach Shelley vouched for that and hoped she would come good.
“Yeah she has not had the tournament or the numbers that she would like to have had. Getting into the tournament she bowled really well and the bilateral series as well she had a really important partnership for us against New Zealand.
She had to get into the captaincy role and she does that well. She’s a really calm captain and she had to do that a number of times. As far as disrupting the team, she stepped into that role really well and did a great job. She’s capable of winning games at No 7.”
Shelley also added that Australia had to devise a strategy on what could be their best XI against India, which will factor in the conditions as well.
