Australia's Women's team have been on a long tour to India whereby they started with the Test format followed by the ODI format. Known for their domination, they portrayed the same when the Alyssa-Healy-led side steamrolled India Women's side by a massive 190-run margin. As a result, after suffering a defeat in the only Test, the visitors bounced back grandly to complete a clean sweep over the hosts in the three-match ODI series.
Speaking of the game, batting first, opener Phoebe Litchfield starred with the bat to slam her first century (119 off 125) on her maiden tour to India. Captain Healy too found her mojo and played a superb knock (82 off 85) to put up an 189-run match-defining stand. In the same vein, post the match, Litchfield reflected on her performance. She came up with an interesting thought about playing the reverse sweep shot.
Though, the Indian spinners thought that this stroke was Aussie batter's weakness, it turns out that Phoebe Litchfield practices her stroke hard in nets. In fact, she revealed that while executing reverse sweep she never really cared whether the ball would spin a great deal or not. Notably, the South Paw attempted the reverse sweep a remarkable 12 times throughout the ODI series and accumulated 22 runs against India Women.
"I still play it no matter if it spins or not. It's more about the area of the ground I can access rather than [thinking] if it's spinning, and then if it is spinning it's probably a good option because it's hard to play with a straight bat," Litchfield was quoted as saying by ESPN Cricinfo.
I have got to work on conventional, it's got me out every ODI innings: Litchfield
Apart from discussing about the reverse sweep, Phoebe Litchfield also talked about honing her skills in playing the regular sweep shot. Interestingly enough, she revealed that she had been working on her wrist speed to generate power for the stroke.
Notably, Litchfield finished the 50-over format on a high as she amassed 260 runs with two half-centuries and a match-winning century, respectively. Despite that, she was seemingly concerned about bettering her conventional sweep shot. The 20-year-old was dismissed in the first and second ODI of the series by Sneh Rana and Shreyanka Patil while attempting the sweep shot.
"I have got to work on the conventional sweep because it's got me out every ODI innings hit so far. The reverse is a strength of mine and I practice it a lot on the nets and just work on my wrist speed. I think that's an important factor of it. And just sort of controlling it. One of them went in the air close to [Pooja] Vastrakar [at backward point] today. It's just all down to practice," Litchfield concluded.
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