T20 World Cup 2023 with Gargi Banerjee: ""Jemi's fifty will give her a world of confidence""

India started the Women's T20 World Cup 2023 on a happy note defeating the arch-rivals Pakistan by 7 wickets on Sunday. Jemimah Rodrigues scored an unbeaten 53 from 38 balls to help the Indian team win their first match of the competition. Along with her, Richa Ghosh was superb with bat down the order with Jemimah.

In our special segment "T20 World Cup 2023 with Gargi Banerjee", the former Indian cricketer said Jemimah's fifty will give her a world of confidence.

Recently Jemimah Rodrigues did not have a great run in the T20 circuit. She was even dropped from the previous T20 World Cup as well. The 23-year-old Indian batter looked steady from ball one and changed gear when she was needed.

"Jemimah showed control and steadiness throughout her inning. This is a very good news for the Indian team that she started the competition well," Gargi Banerjee said in an exclusive interview with Sportz Point.

But, Jemimah's inning will have gone in vain if Richa Ghosh wasn't there with her. Richa's ability to hit boundaries at will and at the right time has been on point. The U-19 T20 World Cup winner scored 31 from just 20 balls with a strike rate of 155 to ensure India have their highest successful chase in T20 World Cup history.

"She does not need to prove anything to anyone. We all have seen what she (Richa) is keepable off. We just need some consistent runs from her. She looked calm out there, which is great when you are chasing a total," Gargi Banerjee expressed.

Although even with the win, India need to improve a lot of things if they want to beat better teams later in the tournament. With the evolution of T20 Cricket, an upset can come from anywhere. Hence, team India needs to be at their best in every department.

"Look, first of all, we should not have let Pakistan score that many runs in the first inning. Overall bowling performance was not good from our bowlers. Pace attack needs to do better."

"Deepti did not have a great day. It can happen to anyone. But, we need to be tighter as a bowling unit. We cannot let anyone score that many runs in the first inning," she added.

Moreover, she feels catching needs to be better. Although ground fielding was good from India, catching was not at its best. In a tough competition like T20 World Cups, you don't want to give second chances to opponent batters.

But overall, India did well to chase the score down with the main batter Smirti Mandhana sitting in the dugouts. She is expected to recover from her finger injury and come back into the playing eleven in the next encounter against West Indies. In that case, Gargi Banerjee feels India can strengthen their bowling lineup including Shikha Pandey in the team while dropping Pooja Vastrakar and Yastika Bhatia for the next match.