Ghosh and de Klerk's number eight madness

Two number eights made more than a third of the runs in this match, and were trapped in an epic fight to the death.

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Richa Ghosh is not someone who should average 27. But there are reasons for that. One is her fast starts down the order, despite averaging 34 in the WPL. But another is Ghosh is all, or nothing. Dots or sixes.

Her 17th, 18th and 19th balls yesterday were dots. She was set, trying to score, but she doesn’t pick gaps. It will happen again later.

This time she decides, well, I better just clear their heads. And once she starts that, Ghosh goes from dots to demon.

But if that was an incredible innings, what about Nadine de Klerk? Before today she had 17 sixes in all of her 123 international matches.

This innings, she hit five of them. And she won the battle of the lower order.

Richa Ghosh just played one of the greatest innings by a number eight, and it still wasn’t the best number eight knock in the match.

Richa Ghosh usually scores quick to begin her innings. Only Ash Gardner is better at it. Being at faster than a run a ball when starting a women’s ODI knock is quite a statement. But both of these players have a reason for that, they are there to hit, and way too talented to be where they are batting.

So at times they have become hitters, when in truth they have more use than that.

For Ghosh, it seems to have stunted her game a little. Her strike rotation is nearly non-existent. She either blocks the ball a lot, or tries to whack it.

All, or nothing.

This is an extraordinary dots to sixes graph. It shows almost no ability to rotate the strike, she only gets twos when they are really easy, but has a slight bump on boundary fours. And then she’s all about the maximums.