Players talk about the best cricket performance they watched in the 2010s
by Jhulan Goswami
Harmanpreet Kaur
171 not out v Australia, semi-final, Women's World Cup, Derby, 2017
It was an honour for me to be in the dressing room and watch that innings unfold from such close quarters.
It was a really thrilling performance, because we did not expect something like that. Perhaps neither did Australia. Yes, Harman is a very good cricketer, a talented cricketer, who can clear the boundary with ease. But the way she performed that day given the kind of physical pain she was in because of the multiple injuries she was carrying was unbelievable.
She was struggling with a lot of niggles - finger, shoulder, wrist, this, that - but she came out and turned that match on its head and made it a really significant knock in women's cricket. What an innings!
I remember every match, every moment, of our World Cup campaign vividly. The lead-up to Harman's knock was equally memorable. The long sessions we had with Tushar [Arothe, former head coach], the entire team going out for meals to this one restaurant in Derby after the matches, hanging around. Then, on the field, each member contributing with vital knocks: Smriti [Mandhana] setting it off with important innings in the first two matches, and while Harman was struggling to get runs, Sushma [Verma], Veda [Krishnamurthy], Punam [Raut] all chipping in. Mithali [Raj] played one of the best innings of her career, a match-winning hundred, in the virtual quarter-final [against New Zealand] and then Harman came up with this innings in the semi-finals.
We lost the final, yes, and it still hurts, but these are things you remember - and that 171 is one of them.
More in the decade in review, 2010-19