Recalls after a long lay-off are never easy on a player. The magnitude of the comeback only heightens further when it comes at a crunch stage of a competition.
When Shafali Verma was summoned to the Indian squad after opener Pratika Rawal was ruled out of the World Cup, it seemed like the management had taken a gamble.
But early indications in the nets a few days before the semifinal were to give us an initial glimpse of a new, refined batter. Someone who had added more encouraging features to her game.
Verma in training did not resemble the erratic batter that we had come to know. Instead, she looked organised, tried to play the ball on her merit and crucially worked on her defence.
She followed a similar template for most of her innings in the final against South Africa on Sunday. There was a lot of emphasis on playing along the ground, using the full bat face, and crucially, no swinging across the line.
South Africa had deployed three fielders on the off-side ring and two on the on-side, with the mid-on up. It is a trap which others have set in the past as well, knowing her tendency to swing across the line to back of length balls, mistiming them and getting caught inside the circle.
Except, the opening bowling duo of Marizanne Kapp and Ayabonga Khaka kept it full outside off-stump, hoping for the ball to swing off the pitch, which was under covers for most of the afternoon. The line of attack worked perfectly, to what Verma had trained for.
The right-hander was able to drive the ball without fear, piercing the off-side field to get things going for India. With South Africa offering no room to Smriti Mandhana in the early stages of her innings, Verma had no option but to pounce on anything loose that was bowled at her end.
After trying the outside off-stump line for the first five overs, South Africa’s bowlers opted to shorten the length a bit to try and force her to play off the back foot a lot more.
An earlier version may have been tempted to go over the ring fielder.
But this was Verma 2.0, who, instead of taking the aerial route, opted to play a lot more shots along the ground, rotating the strike to keep the scoreboard ticking along.
At 64/0 after 10 overs, Verma, along with Mandhana, had given India the early impetus in the final. The right-hander had lasted a lot longer than South Africa would have hoped for, without playing the way they had expected her to.
The crowd, by now, had really come into the game with a lot of cheers even for singles. Under such circumstances, Verma gave them what they had come to see — a straight six over the top of Nadine de Klerk’s head in the 15th over, which cleared the ropes comfortably.
An earlier version may have gotten carried away by that strike, but the one that turned up on Sunday was different.
The six was followed by a string of singles, the sixth of which took her to a fifty. It had been a responsible, sensible knock and one which had the characteristic many felt was not in her batting and hence led to her omission from the World Cup squad in the first place: maturity.
By now, South Africa was hoping for a mistake to happen from Verma’s end, who seemed to have fully found the measure of the surface.
But when the error did come, the visitors fluffed it to their great disappointment. In the 21st over, with a deep mid-wicket in place, Verma rode on her confidence and slog swept Sune Luus in the air to try and clear the boundary.
But the ball hit low on her bat, and as a result, the connection wasn’t as smooth as she would have liked. This was South Africa’s chance, except Anneke Bosch spilt a sitter to give Verma a life on 56.
It also summed up South Africa’s performance on the field. It seemed apparent by then that the occasion had got to them, with a roaring home crowd, flat pitch, and high on confidence batters at the crease.
But it wasn’t long before Lady Luck would smile on them again. In the 24th over, as Verma completed a single, something on her left foot had twitched the wrong way. The batter was in pain, and the physio rushed out to do a check. South Africa gathered in a huddle to plot a new way of getting Verma out.
Except, after receiving treatment, Verma sensed a real licence to go after the bowling. The Verma 2.0 version returned to the 1.0 version. Out came the straight aerial hit, the slice over cover, all of which crossed the boundary and bounced in front before crossing the rope.
An injured Verma with a clear mind and licence to go after the bowling was the last thing South Africa wanted. But to their advantage, it also gave them a chance to dismiss her with one false shot.
That came in the 28th over as she fell to Bosch, trying to clear mid-off. The dismissal would have given the bowler the most relief, as it was her dropped catch which had added an extra 31 runs to Verma’s score. The damage, by then, however, had well and truly been done.
Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.
