India players celebrate in the match against New Zealand New Zealand. (Express Photo | Narendra Vaskar)India finally qualified for the Women’s World Cup semifinals as the 4th team after they defeated New Zealand by 53 runs in a rain-truncated match in Navi Mumbai on Thursday. Smriti Mandhana and Pratika Rawal scored centuries while Jemimah Rodrigues slammed 76 as India posted 340/3 in 49 overs, with one over cut due to rain disruption. After that, the rain played spoilsport once again in the innings break as the match was shortened further, with the DLS coming into effect giving New Zealand a target of 325 in 44 overs. Ultimately, it was too much for the Kiwis as they managed to put on 271/8 before running out of overs.
But here you may ask a question that how India qualified for the semifinals with both teams still having one more match in hand. India who are on 6 points will play Bangladesh on Sunday while New Zealand take on England. If New Zealand beat England and India lose to Bangladesh both teams would be on same points and depending on how both matches went, New Zealand could have clawed back the deficit in run rate. But we won’t have this scenario because of the ICC tournament rules.
According to rule, in the event of teams finishing on equal points in the league stage, the ordering of teams will be decided in the following order of priority:
– The team with the greatest number of wins in the league matches will be placed in the higher position.
– If there are teams with equal points and equal wins in the league matches, then in such case the teams will be ordered according to their net run rate (NRR) in the league matches.
– If two or more teams are still equal, they will be ordered according to the result of the head-to-head match played between them (points, then if still equal, NRR in those matches.
– If the above does not resolve the league ordering, or if all matches within the league stage produce no results, the teams will be ordered as per their original league seedings.
In the current scenario, even if New Zealand get a win against England, they can get to two wins at best even if India lose to Bangladesh. Meanwhile, India have already chalked up 3 wins by virtue of which they qualified to the semifinals.
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