Indian team’s fielding was very poor even in the semi-finals.Image Credit source: PTI
India-W vs Australia-W: The Indian women’s cricket team made it to the semi-finals of the ICC Women’s World Cup 2025, but on one front it seemed to lag in the entire tournament. This flaw was also visible in the semi-finals of the tournament, where it faced the defending champion Australia and this time captain Harmanpreet Kaur repeated this mistake. We are talking about the fielding of Team India, which gave a lot of advantage to Australia in the semi-finals and the catching proved to be the worst in that too. Team India displayed very average fielding by dropping 18 catches in this tournament.
The Indian team, playing the World Cup on its own soil, performed strongly on many occasions in batting and bowling in this tournament. This was the reason that it got a place in the last-4 but Team India’s fielding did not contribute much in this. In fact, due to fielding, he was seen suffering losses on many occasions. However, despite this the team continued the trend of dropping catches in the semi-finals also.
Captain Harmanpreet Kaur dropped the catch
In the semi-final match played in Navi Mumbai, Team India was fielding first and the first catch was dropped in the third over itself. This mistake was not made by any other fielder but by captain Harmanpreet Kaur. An easy catch was thrown by Renuka Singh in mid-off but Harmanpreet could not catch it. Healy was only on 2 runs at that time and given the kind of batsman he is, this mistake could have cost Team India heavily.
However, in the sixth over itself, Kranti Gaur bowled her and brought relief to Captain Kaur as Healy was out after scoring only 5 runs. After this, Team India did not get easy chances and the next catch came directly in the 26th over. This time the bowler was Amanjot Kaur, on whose ball Phoebe Litchfield was caught by wicketkeeper Richa Ghosh. However, Richa was posted near the stumps and the catch was not only fast but also a bit far. But still the failure was on India’s account only.
Dropped 18 catches in the tournament
Lichfield was on 102 runs at that time and finally got out on the score of 119. But this once again proved the poor fielding of Team India. Overall, Indian players dropped 18 catches in this World Cup. Overall, the Indian team took a total of 35 catches in this World Cup, while dropped 18 catches. Team India’s catching success rate was only 66 percent and in this case, it stood 7th in the 8-team tournament.
Not only this, in the semi-finals, Team India’s ground fielding was worse than its catching. After the dismissal of Alyssa Healy in the sixth over itself, Team India had a chance to put pressure but in the very next over there was so much misfielding that Australia easily got 2-3 boundaries. Even after this, the story remained the same and many times Australia kept getting extra boundaries or one or two runs due to poor fielding.