T20 World Cup: India leave Australia in a spin on opening night

We will be old and grey and probably toothless before we learn if these are the golden days of women’s cricket.

Australia’s Ellyse Perry is bowled for a golden duck by India’s Poonam Yadav as wicketkeeper Taniya Bhatia celebrates. Picture: AAP

We will be old and grey and probably toothless before we learn if these are the golden days of women’s cricket or merely the humble beginnings of something even greater than we currently envisage.

All we know for certain, for now, is that the T20 World Cup feels the biggest show in any Australian town … and that’s an entirely new domain for these flannelled fools of the female variety.

I saw a bloke on Sydney’s northern beaches buy three cartons of beer on Friday afternoon. Asked for details of the occasion, he announced that mates were coming round to watch the evening’s cricket. Ah, I thought. Acceptance. But Australia left those fellas crying into their cans as their batting capitulated in a stinging 17-run defeat to India.

Legspinner Poonam Yadav conjured four superb overs that should have given her a hat-trick but still succeeded in turning the game on its head in a mesmerising spell of flight and deception.

She dismissed Ellyse Perry for a golden duck while netting 4-19 in the manner of a spider manufacturing a silken web.

Alyssa Healy made double figures for the first time this decade but her 31-ball knock of 51 was unable to reel in India’s 4-132.

Australia were cruising at 1-55 before losing 8-60 in a hurry to be skittled for 115. The glove work of India’s Taniya Bhatia was brilliant, notwithstanding the nick she dropped that would have given Yadav a hat-trick. Yadav was denied a fifth wicket when she bowled Ash Gardner from a delivery that bounced twice, an illegality. Australia must now win every pool match to reach the semi-finals.

The interest in the fixture was genuine, widespread. The banners and posters plastered all over Sydney had not felt misplaced. There’s three household names in the Australian side: Perry, Healy, Meg Lanning. A few others are starting to ring a bell. They’ve earned the royal treatment through years and years and years of invisible toil.

Perry’s Test debut in 2008 “never happened,” she says, in the sense that virtually nobody has seen it. TV coverage? You’re kidding. Radio? Nope. Newspaper reports? A couple of pars. Now she’s part of what may be the most popular sporting team in the nation. They’re entertaining. They’re attacking. They have mongrel. They have received exactly what they deserve. Respect. But they’re in strife after Yadav ate them alive.

Australia’s captain Lanning, who has apparently earned the nickname of Serious Sally, won the toss and elected to bowl, inserting the lightning Indian opening combination of the gum-chewing 16-year-old, Shafali Verma, and Smriti Mandhana.

The prodigiously gifted and totally fearless Verma had Serious Sally looking more serious than ever when she got off to a flyer.

She said before the tournament she wanted the world to know her name and if she kept this up, she was already on her way. Gentlemen in the crowd blew their trumpets and sang, “Come on Aussie, come on,” Verma went about five minutes without facing a ball. The loss of momentum stopped her cold. She punched a catch off the toe of her bat to Annabel Sutherland at midwicket, giving Perry her first wicket. Verma was gone for 29 off 15 deliveries.

Healy botched a stumping of Harmanpreet Kaur but it mattered naught. The ball from Jess Jonassen bounced off her left pad and onto the leg stump. Australia had taken 3-9 in three overs as Healy doubled over in embarrassment. She’d take it, and so would Serious Sally. India cobbled together 4-132. A par score? It was a couple over, but it was where it needed to be. On the board.

Of Australia’s failed chase Lanning could only offer realism. “We didn’t execute with the bat, unfortunately. A lack of partnerships. We came into this match as ready as we could have been. We’ve got to move on pretty quickly.”

Healy’s assessment was more blunt. “I don’t think we batted that smart towards the end.”