The last two games against England and Sri Lanka saw

Indian bowlers leaking close to 550 runs with the visitors finding it easy against the pace and spin trio of Jhulan Goswami, Nagarajan Niranjana and Ekta Bisht. In the batting department, barring Harmanpreet Kaur, Karu Jain and Murugesan Tirushkamini, no other batswomen could be able to convert the starts into a good score. India would hope that the openers provide them a good platform after they missed out against England and Sri Lanka. Their middle-order would have to pitch in to help set a competitive total to defend against Pakistan on a placid Barabati track. India would be in no mood to take their neighbours lightly and would like to put their best foot forward in the day game tomorrow. The bowlers also need to perform better during the power play overs as most of the runs have been leaked during that period. On the other hand, Pakistan have more reasons to worry than the Indians as neither their batting nor bowling has clicked. They were annihilated by the South Africans in their last group league fixture by 126 runs to send the Women in Green crashing out of the event yesterday. They managed meagre scores of 84, 104 and 81 in the encounters against Australia, New Zealand and South Africa respectively and the bowlers too failed to make an impression. Bismah Maroof is the only batswoman in the Pakistan team to have offered some resistance to the rival bowlers. Captain Sana Mir's failure at the top-order has hit them badly and they need their skipper to lead from the front.