‘She makes other teams…’: Former Australia skipper warns rivals as Deepti Sharma shines in World Cup start

After recording her best statistics of 3 for 45 against Pakistan, Deepti is now the tournament’s leading wicket-taker with six wickets in two games. She also played a significant role with the bat, scoring a vital run-a-ball 53 in India’s opening match against Sri Lanka.

“She’s obviously got a lot of experience behind her now and playing conditions that she knows really well and she seems to have found a really nice spot in the middle order there to be able to come in and play how she wants.

“You know the good thing with Deepti is she can come in if you’ve lost a few wickets and sort of settle things down and right the ship but if she needs to come in and dominate and be a bit more aggressive, you can also do that. So that’s a really good thing to have in the middle order,” said Lanning to the ICC.

“Then with the ball she’s very clever. You know just subtle changes here and there are very effective and she knows what works so to start off the tournament really well will give her a lot of belief and it’ll make some other sides very nervous, I think, to have her playing so well, and especially because they’ve got so many other match winners too,” she added.

Due to their poor performances in the opening two games, India’s two main batters, captain Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana, are yet to make an impact in the tournament. Even without major contributions from Mandhana and Harmanpreet, Meg Lanning believes that the Women in Blue will gain confidence from winningearly in the competition.