IND vs AUS: Bursting with potential

India’s Harmanpreet Kaur (left) and Jemimah Rodrigues during the T20 WC semi-final against Australia in Cape Town on Thursday. Pic/Getty Images

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. India's heart-breaking loss to Australia is another near-miss in the ever-increasing list of such dalliances for our women's cricket team in recent years. Questions about the mentality of the squad and whether the team have the temperament to get over the line may seem to be obvious during this time. But these doubts are misplaced.

This team are bursting with potential and will have its date with destiny eventually.

It can be argued that the Indian women's cricket team stand on the cusp of greatness and it's often the final step that is the hardest. Sporting success is as much a matter of luck as it is of merit. You can't win a lottery if you don't buy a ticket, and our women keep turning up, tickets in hand, ready for fate to return the favour.

Sometimes, the first ones are won by being the last ones left standing. It is not always a procession of perfection to the summit. Sometimes you get there crawling, bloodied and bruised. The Indian women's cricket team have plenty of bruises now, and it may have to crawl to the finish line. Winning their first senior World Cup is inevitable. It is not a matter of if but when.

It is important to contextualise the Indian team's performances with a lesson in history. Pre-2005, the year that BCCI took over women's cricket, there were four competitive teams on the circuit-Australia, England, New Zealand and India. India could be counted as the team punching above its weight. The rest had relatively better systemic support and didn't suffer from the weight of history. From 2005 to 2017, Indian women's cricket suffered a state of neglect. In that time many other teams seemed to have caught up or seemingly overtaken us - West Indies, Sri Lanka, South Africa for example. Instead of playing as many games as the likes of England and Australia and professionalising the sport at the pace of other international teams, we were left stagnant. The 2017 World Cup changed all that. Make no mistake, we punched above our weight even then. We had no business beating Australia in the semi-final and we had one hand on the trophy before it all fell apart.

Better match fees, a boost

While the national team blew hot and cold pre-2017, a quiet revolution was brewing on the domestic circuit. As a cricketer who grew up playing the age group levels before 2005, the introduction of respectable match fees is perhaps the point where things perceptively shifted. While I was playing age group cricket, you had the likes of a Punam Raut or an MD Kamini who stood out as future India players. There weren't a whole lot of the finished articles floating around then. The senior level is where the cream was. And the jump from the junior to the senior level was a discernible one. After some time away from the game, when I returned to the sport around 2017, the landscape had changed dramatically. I could count a few of these "stand outs" within my own state circuit. It was humbling knowing that if I had been 16 then, I wouldn't make the state under-16 team. It points to an unbelievable level of grassroots talent.

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The fact that India has just won the inaugural under-19 World Cup should indicate the level of talent going around on the domestic circuit. That India won despite England and Australia participating is the real marker of the health of Indian women's cricketing talent. There is not much that separates us from England and Australia in terms of depth of talent. The difference lies purely in the historical head start they have over us and one they were allowed to keep in the years since the merger with the BCCI. The pre-2017 years have been a huge opportunity missed in terms of catching up with these two teams that will always be the main stumbling block to winning the World Cup. We didn't play as often as them, we didn't get paid a similar level and we frankly didn't take women's cricket as seriously as them. Things have largely changed now. But it is important to remember that the WBBL started eight years ago. India will have their first women's IPL in a fortnight. Our players weren't even allowed to participate in the WBBL before 2016.

Need that sucker punch

Indian women's cricket has been going toe-to-toe with the Australian and England teams for a few years now. All that is lacking is the sucker punch. I feel it is pertinent to point out that a certain Jurgen Norbert Klopp had lost six finals in a row before he finally won the Champions League with Liverpool. Our women suffer from a similar weight of history, but it is with relentless positivity and resilience that hoodoos are overcome. In the now immortal words of Stevie G, "we go again."

The writer, a former cricketer who represented Jharkhand and Delhi University, is a policy analyst working at the intersection of sports and social policy.