You cannot claim that India was in danger because I hadn’t batted yet.
After making half of the writers in the room laugh with her opening remarks about India’s return, Amanjot Kaur quipped half-seriously that she was actually afraid they would make her famous—or worse, notorious—for her one-liners.
When Amanjot stated it, there was a hint of humor in her tone, but the purpose was clearly aggressive. And when India faced Sri Lanka at 124 for 6 in their home opener for the 2025 World Cup, it was precisely the mindset they needed.
Prior to the event, India’s greatest strength was a stable and dominant top five. Sport, however, has a way of upending even the most meticulously planned strategies. The ageless Inoka Ranaweera dismissed India after they had a decent, if not solid, start by taking their ‘3, 4 and 5’ in a single over. In the subsequent delivery, Richa Ghosh chopped it straight to cover point after pursuing a short and wide ball, which made the situation worse.
Their mission was to get India out of the hole, and Amanjot joined Deepti Sharma, who was still getting used to a slightly sticky crease herself. The pair made an improbable but powerful combination. One is an experienced all-rounder whose contributions have frequently been undervalued, and the other is a World Cup rookie whose position in the starting lineup wasn’t assured due to her lack of play since a hiatus for workload management.
As a calm yet strategic middle-fielder who could absorb dot-ball pressure early and make snap decisions when acceleration was imminent, Deepti was exactly what India needed her to be. Deepti quickly redirected pressure, just like in the very next over after new-batter Amanjot had hit five consecutive dots against Ranaweera. Deepti was quick to kneel down and sweep both freebies to the ropes as Chamari Athapaththu wandered down the leg side at the beginning and finish of her over.
It’s a shot. Not only did Deepti make 19 of the 10 attempted sweeps tonight, but she has relied on her the most to tackle spin since 2024. Since 2024, she has used sweeps for up to 43.11 percent of her runs against spin, with the conventional sweep accounting for 40 percent of these. When sweeping starts early or is done more frequently, it might not always look nice, but it did the job.
Amanjot was the brawn if Deepti was the brain. When the veteran made a mistake in her lines, the latter quickly saw it and confidently swept and slog-swept the left-arm spinner to the leg-side boundary, despite Ranaweera’s intimidating stats up until that point. When he was 19, Amanjot took a lifeline from Kavisha Dilhari and forced the Sri Lankans to pay for their error. The subsequent Dilhari over produced a maximum of 13.
Athapaththu returned to pace with her loyal assistant, Udeshika Prabodhani, when the counterattacking pair was doing better than run-a-ball, but she was unable to overcome the courageous. On her way to her first ODI half-century in 45 balls, Amanjot received a second reprieve. She forced Sri Lanka’s hand once more by hitting boundaries in the next overs off the senior pacer.
Despite outscoring her senior partner to a fifty and leaving after a third drop, she had sufficiently damaged Sri Lanka’s reputation to prepare it for a Sneh Rana special in the end. While Deepti raised a run-a-ball fifty, Rana was able to use the long handle because of her composed demeanor at the opposite end. India’s score went from being competitive to intimidating after the final two overs produced 34 runs alone. Surprisingly, a team who started six runs down for less than 125 scored more than 250 runs for the second time in Women’s ODI history.
The retaliation took Sri Lankans by surprise. It caused the team that had just thrown itself into a huge lead to make mistakes, and by taking advantage of this little lapse, India’s seventh-wicket partnership demonstrated that the lower-order is equally capable of winning matches.
“It was a turning point,” Deepti remarked following her Guwahati Player of the Match win. “We had dropped consecutive wickets. Our goal was to work together for a long time and play the game through to the 46th or 47th over. We carried out the plans we had made. I am accustomed to these kinds of innings and circumstances, having done this before, so there was absolutely no pressure. That collaboration with Amanjot was significant at the time.
Saying that Deepti spearheaded the bowling attack with a 3 for 54 to eventually write a comfortable victory ignores the wider picture. The Sri Lankan skipper herself said that India’s renowned batting depth was fully, unexpectedly, and prematurely put to the test in a tournament for which they are regarded as one of the title favorites. The first game wasn’t perfect, but it may have been.
It can be unnerving to see a 4 for 4 collapse at the beginning of a tournament with such huge stakes. However, the 103-run partnership between Deepti and Amanjot was actually exactly what India needed to test the lower-order’s ability, which had frequently been underutilized in the run-up to this World Cup campaign.
Ironically, this new trend contrasts with its status as the team’s go-to option when things get tight. England eliminated India twice in a row, first at Lord’s in 2017 and then in Antigua in 2018. Australia took advantage of this weakness in the semifinal of the 2023 World Cup. The lower order resilience is encouraging because India’s batting depth is now proven in practice rather than theory, as evidenced by this Guwahati rescue effort and another one two weeks ago that was also spearheaded by Deepti at the backside.
It was true that India was having problems. However, as Amanjot stated, problem is relative, particularly if you haven’t batted yet. She uttered the words, “An injured lion takes a step back, only to take a bigger leap forward,” to elicit another round of lively laughing. That wasn’t just a one-liner, though; it was a glimpse into a way of thinking.
