Toss India chose to bat vs Australia
India captain Harmanpreet Kaur chose to bat in their do-or-die game against Australia under overcast skies at Lord's. After South Africa's tense win over Bangladesh at the same ground minutes before the toss, India are two points behind Australia and South Africa on the Group 1 points table. But a win over Australia will take them through to the knockouts because of their already superior NRR (2.268) compared to South Africa's (0.633).
Unbeaten Australia lead the table with an NRR of 4.724 and are pretty much through to the semi-finals irrespective of how this game ends. South Africa's hopes of making the knockouts rest on Australia's victory.
India made one change, bringing in Kranti Gaud for Nandani Sharma.
Australia got a boost in their batting line-up with the return of Phoebe Litchfield who had missed their last three games with a quad injury. She only played their tournament opener against South Africa and had scored a 24-ball 50. Litchfield came in for legspinner Alana King which means Australia's bowling options are now Lucy Hamilton, Kim Garth, Nicola Carey and Annabel Sutherland for pace and Georgia Wareham, captain Sophie Molineux and Ash Gardner for spin.
It's going to be the same pitch where South Africa chased down 118 against Bangladesh in the first game of the day with plenty of swing for the new-ball bowlers. The square boundaries are skewed at 58 meters and 65 meters and a dense cloud cover continued to envelop the ground.
Australia: 1 Beth Mooney (wk), 2 Georgia Voll, 3 Phoebe Litchfield, 4 Ellyse Perry, 5 Ashleigh Gardner, 6 Georgia Wareham, 7 Annabel Sutherland, 8 Nicola Carey, 9 Sophie Molineux (capt), 10 Lucy Hamilton, 11 Kim Garth
India: 1 Shafali Verma, 2 Smriti Mandhana, 3 Yastika Bhatia, 4 Jemimah Rodrigues, 5 Harmanpreet Kaur (capt), 6 Richa Ghosh (wk), 7 Deepti Sharma, 8 Radha Yadav, 9 Kranti Gaud, 10 Renuka Singh, 11 N Shree Charani