India have been far from their best at the tournament, stuttering past Bangladesh in their last game with numerous fielding lapses, following a six-wicket loss to South Africa. Their constant chopping and changing of the XI for every match of this World Cup has given the impression that India aren’t sure of their ideal XI, even as the league stage comes to an end on Sunday.

Australia, on the other hand, have been as ruthless as they are known to be at ICC events, with massive margins of 113 runs, 98 runs, nine wickets and 65 runs in the unbeaten run so far, even without their first-choice players like Phoebe Litchfield and Ash Gardner missing some of the games.

But India will take heart from beating Australia 2-1 in their most recent bilateral T20I series in February this year in Australia. After the series was level 1-1, India clinched the decider in Adelaide, where Smriti Mandhana top-scored with 82 off 55 to be named the Player of the Match.

“Yeah, we did well in the T20 format in Australia,” Mandhana said ahead of their crunch game against the same opposition, which will decide their knockouts fate. “We’ll take a lot of confidence from that. And also, with the WPL, I feel the girls are very well prepped in terms of taking the high-pressure games a little better than what we could before. So hopefully we can take all of those experiences and memories and play the best we can tomorrow.

“We all are really looking forward to it. A very important match for us, a must-win for us to go through. Having said that, we’ll stick with the processes. We’ll go out there, work hard, work really hard, and try to put up the best we can. It’s an important match and I’m sure everyone is aware of that. But having said that, we have done well against them and we’ll take that confidence ahead.

“We’ve all spoken a lot about how we really want to play the aggressive brand of cricket and that’s something which we’ll all look to do tomorrow.”

Mandhana recalled how she looked up to the Australian team in her initial years in international cricket but the recent results, the exchange of players across T20 franchise leagues and India’s historic victory against Australia in the ODI World Cup semi-final at home last year had narrowed the gap between the two teams.

“Again, I feel the gap has definitely narrowed with a few of our players playing the Big Bash [WBBL], them playing the WPL, their experiences being shared,” Mandhana said. “And I feel the kind of cricket the Indian team has played in the last four-five years – I wouldn’t say only the last two years – but I think it was a build-up over the last five-six-odd years, how steadily I think we’ve played. And definitely, of course, that gap has narrowed down and I just feel now at this moment, especially in T20 cricket, it’s just about whichever team is having a good day is going to win the match.”

“We’ve always had good contests against them”, Mandhana said. “Even as a batter, I’ve always looked forward to playing them because they’re one of the best in the world. Having said that, we’ve had good success against them and, yeah, again, for me, I wouldn’t really look into the past, what’s happened, what I have done against them or what the team has done. We all have to really go out, play the ball and not anything else, not the situation, not anything else. We just have to play the ball and make the best for the team.”

“Yeah, watching Shafali bat from the other end is a pleasure for sure. We had a very quiet series in England. We both were really pumped to get back to giving good starts because whenever we lay the foundation, more or less we are in a good place. And that’s what we will look to do and we always look to do. So I’m really happy with the way she’s striking the ball, and I hope that we can stitch up a partnership together tomorrow.”