Three for 14 against Pakistan, 3 for 6 against Netherlands, 3 for 29 against South Africa. In their first two games of this T20 World Cup, India's middle-order stutters were masked either by cameos from Richa Ghosh or by the lack of firepower in the opposition line-ups, and India won both games comfortably.
But as soon as India ran into South Africa, the stiffest opposition of their campaign so far, their middle-order wobble, combined with the two catches they dropped of Marizanne Kapp, cost them the game. They are now in precarious must-win territory if they are to reach the semi-finals, especially with their final league game looming against the mighty Australians.
There were few signs of these issues in the build-up to the tournament, with Yastika Bhatia, Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet Kaur all scoring runs in the series win against England. The questions around a lack of runs instead surrounded the opening pair, but come the T20 World Cup, it's Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma who have churned out strong starts only for the middle order to squander them.
If India were to make their path to the semi-finals any smoother, they had to bring out their A game against South Africa, or at least make fewer mistakes than their opponents. When Mandhana and Shafali raced off the blocks to help post 52 in the first five overs, India might have been looking at a second successive 200-plus total.
The sun was out, the already dry pitch was getting baked, and South Africa were under the pump. Shabnim Ismail's lines weren't the best in her first over but when she returned to finish the powerplay, she bowled a snorter of a bouncer that Shafali gloved behind while falling onto the ground. Shafali has shown a tendency to get dismissed by short balls, including one against Netherlands during this tournament, and the one she faced from Ismail was the nastiest one yet.
Rodrigues was the No. 3 in India's first two games. They promoted Bhatia ahead of her on Sunday, raising the question of how sure India are of Bhatia's position in this line-up. Ayabonga Khaka would have noted Bhatia's tendency to hang back in the crease to hit the ball square, and sent down a skidder that trapped her lbw on the back foot. India's run rate slipped as they tried to consolidate towards a death-overs launch, but they couldn't hold onto their wickets either. With the pitch still looking good to bat on, Nadine de Klerk sent down a trademark slower delivery that induced Rodrigues to offer a return catch: 54 for 1 had become 83 for 4.
In T20s, the game moves fast, and for the first time in the tournament India found their opposition acting quicker than them. If South Africa came well-planned for the batters, India were unable to counter them even to the extent of posting a par score.
The South African bowlers gave no room to Ghosh in the death overs, took the pace off the ball to force the batters to manufacture power, and packed the leg-side boundary with three fielders against Deepti Sharma, who loves sweeping and swiping the ball in that direction. In her first 11 balls, Ghosh managed just one boundary, that too off an edge. By the time she faced three more, Kapp bowled a cutter so slow, at nearly 83kph, that Ghosh couldn't even clear short fine leg.
An innings that at one point had looked set for 180 or 190, ended at 158, which was "10-15 runs short," according to India's head coach Amol Muzumdar.
"I mean, it's T20 cricket for you," he said about India's third successive middle-order slump. "There will be stages in T20 cricket where you will have, because of the high-risk factor, a lot of wickets that will fall. And we have been playing a brand of cricket, fearless brand of cricket, which we have emphasised on.
"So I guess there will be some days where we will have those wickets falling in a cluster. But I guess that's the way the nature of the game is. It's not much of a concern. Of course, it was a big game. There's no doubt about it. But we still have two more games to look forward to and there is no doubt in my mind that if we play to our potential, we can be on the right side of those two games."
India may not want to look back at their recent ICC campaigns to draw inspiration from, since they didn't play to their potential against any of the big names in the league stages. Even in last year's ODI World Cup, which they eventually won, they lost their league matches against all the other semi-finalists: Australia, England and South Africa. In the last T20 World Cup, in 2024, they went down in their opening fixture against New Zealand and later to Australia, notably because of collapses of 6 for 60 and 6 for 31 respectively, and didn't make the knockouts.
India's semi-finals spot now seems a lot more distant than it did just before the loss to South Africa, and even within their group India don't look like the best team. Australia have steamrolled South Africa, Bangladesh and Netherlands, and South Africa showed on Sunday that they were much better prepared to seize the moments that mattered. The two chances India will rue more than any other will be the ones Radha Yadav put down of Kapp, on 25 and 65.
"She [Kapp] gave us two crucial chances but unfortunately we didn't take that," Harmanpreet said at the presentation. "At this level when you miss such chances nobody is going to give you anything easily and those were the crucial moments and they took the game away from us."
India next face Bangladesh on Thursday before they take on Australia in the last league game of the tournament. Any more glaring errors and they will be staring at a second successive T20 World Cups campaign that ended before the semi-finals stage, instead of the dream they began this tournament with, of lifting two ICC trophies in a row.