It was a tale of two players batting at No 8, producing scarcely believable knocks under immense pressure to produce a World Cup thriller in Visakhapatnam. Richa Ghosh was sensational for India to power them to what appeared to be a winning total of 251 from a woeful situation at 102 In the end though, it was Nadine de Klerk – South Africa's No 8 – who sent the ball soaring into the late-night sky at the ACA VDCA Stadium, smashing Amanjot Kaur's low full toss for a six over deep midwicket. She lifted her arms up and roared, India looked stunned, and South Africa players ran onto the pitch to embrace their all-rounder who finished unbeaten on 84 off 54 balls, to power South Africa home by three wickets and with seven balls to spare. India's defence of 251 – (Was it ever going to be enough?) – began brightly enough. Kranti Gaud's stunning one-handed return sent the batter in red-hot form, Tazmin Brits for a duck. At 81/5 in the 20th over, South Africa were staring at a defeat but their captain Laura Wolvaardt was still in the middle and they had some firepower lower down the order. Wolvaardt and Chloe Tryon then started to dig deep and that was around the time India let the game drift too. View this post on Instagram A post shared by ICC (@icc) In an ODI, especially at a tournament where we have seen plenty of lower-order recoveries already, India needed to close the match out in the middle overs with wickets. But in a lineup where they only had five front-line bowlers, with Harmanpreet Kaur – who rarely ever bowls these days – turning her arm over as the sixth option, India paid the price for keeping the game open for the Proteas power-hitters lower down the order. De Klerk still had a lot of work to do. And she applied the pressure right back on India at the start of the 47th over, taking on Gaud. The youngster has come a long way in a short span of time but bowling at the death overs of a World Cup is uncharted territory and she conceded two sixes and a four. The match turned there. India were also forced to go to Amanjot for the 49th over, having bowled just one more over after the 26th of the innings. De Klerk pounced, smashed two sixes in that over, and scored 55 runs off the last 20 balls she faced for one of the great World Cup heists. De Klerk, player of the match, said she was lost for words. Wolvaardt, the South African captain, said she hadn't seen anything like this in her career, watching De Klerk smash those sixes in the end. And Harmanpreet Kaur for her part was left ruing not just the inability to close out the match but also posting a total that ended up being not enough. View this post on Instagram A post shared by ICC (@icc) Because for the third straight match, India's top half of the batting line-up failed to show up to leave their side in serious strife. A batting order that came into the tournament with a decent volume of runs behind them has simply not been able to replicate it at the big stage. In Guwahati against Sri Lanka, India went from 81/1 to 124 In Colombo against Pakistan, 67/1 turned into 159 And on Thursday in Visakhapatnam, South Africa inflicted another collapse: reducing India from 83/1 to 102 And it is no coincidence that Smriti Mandhana was the first to fall in all three matches – India's, perhaps even the world's best opener in women's ODIs over the last years, hasn't been able to start the World Cup as well as she or the team would have hoped for. In Vizag, there were some more signs of Mandhana not feeling at her best in the middle. Once Mandhana falls, India's top two run-getters in the tournament before this match have not been scoring at a quick enough rate. Harleen Deol's 107 runs have come at a strike rate of 70.39, Pratika Rawal's 105 runs at 69.07. It was a similar tale once more, with Deol falling earlier than usual while Rawal fell for a third score in the thirties, after looking sharp to begin the match. Seen as one of the strengths coming into the tournament, Harmanpreet and Jemimah Rodrigues have both failed to add substantial totals at No 4 and No 5. The skipper has frittered away three starts while Rodrigues has been out on a duck twice in three innings, dismissed playing her bread-and-butter sweep shot twice in two matches and out against left-arm spin on all three occasions. Former England captain Nasser Hussain pointed out on air: "Especially if they play the extra batter, they' going in with five front-line bowlers and playing all their batting options. The whole point of playing all that batting is so that you go harder (at the top), that you have the confidence in your lineup to play attacking cricket," Hussain noted. There have been plenty of warning signs for India's batters already but they seem to have merely treated them as yellow lights and not red. Harmanpreet finally acknowledged the elephant in the room in the post-match chat. Conceding that de Klerk and Tryon were too good in the end while also saying the conditions got easier to bat, Harmanpreet turned the mirror toward India. "As a top order, we need to take responsibility and bat longer, we kept losing wickets in the middle. But a lot of learning for us, because last three games we have been making the same mistakes again and again, I think as a group we need to sit and discuss which things can work for us to get on a decent total on the board," she said. Maybe this would be the wake-up call as Australia come calling next.
