Indian women suffered their second consecutive loss in the World Twenty20, against England in Dharamsala. While the batting unit failed once again, managing a meagre 90 runs on the board, it were the spinners who brought them to a sniffing distance from an unlikely victory. The attack was led by left-arm spinner Ekta Bisht, who returned excellent figures of 4 for 21 from her four overs. To add to that, she also affected a run-out towards the fag end of the match that brought India further close to sealing it off. However, the efforts were not enough as India fell short by two wickets in the end. This was Bisht’s first match of the tournament as she replaced Poonam Yadav in the playing XI. Although the team lost, Bisht was pleased with the fact that she could justify the team and captain’s faith in her. Here are excerpts from her chat with BCCI.TV A tough match but you must be happy with the way you grabbed that chance? I was determined to do well whenever I get the chance. Mithali di showed a lot of confidence in me and all I wanted was to give her a breakthrough whenever she lobs the ball to me. What was your bowling plan given the wicket and the opposition? We had heard that the wicket here is a batting wicket, but when we batted first, we found that it was a very slow wicket. Seeing that Mithali di told us to bowl as slow through the air as possible and not let the ball get easily to the batters. That is what all the spinners tried to do today. Despite the loss, the bowling unit must have gained some confidence from taking the match down to the wire. That is a big positive for us to come out of both these matches (against Pakistan and England). The character we have showed with the ball and in the field will stand us in good stead in our next match, against West Indies and also in the coming games if we manage to get into the knockout stage of the tournament. The last group match is against West Indies. Not much time to delve into these defeats. We all have to put these two games behind us now and channel all our energy into winning the next match. It is an extremely important match for us as we don’t only have to win it but do so by a huge margin. The net run-rate will come into play now and we have to ensure we gain as much in that regards as we can. If we manage to get through to the semi-finals, we will take a lot of confidence from our fightback in those games too. How tough is it to bounce back from such defeats? The team’s atmosphere is good and we ensure it remains that way whether we win or lose. Everyone supports each other and there is no dearth of motivation. But all players will have to find a way to motivate themselves individually. The team must be pleased to see the kind of support women’s cricket is getting in this tournament. Now we feel like even we are playing cricket for India. Cricket is such a craze in this country but we had never experienced that before. In this tournament there is a lot of media coverage for the women’s team. I would like to thank the BCCI for giving as much importance to the Indian women’s team as the men get and having our matches televised.