ICC Women’s T20 World Cup: Tackling Indian leg-spinner Poonam Yadav key for England captain Knight

Poonam Yadav performed superbly against hosts Australia in the opening match of the tournament, claiming four wickets to bamboozle the hosts but she failed to cast her spell the last time India met England in the tournament, giving away 29 from her four overs.

England captain Heather Knight will have to negate the threat posed by Indian spinner Poonam Yadav in their ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020 semi-final match on Thursday (March 5) in order to book a place in the final of the prestigious tournament.

Yadav performed superbly against hosts Australia in the opening match of the tournament, claiming four wickets to bamboozle the hosts. But Yadav failed to cast her spell the last time India met England in the tournament, giving away 29 from her four overs.

"We've practised for her a lot, I thought we played her outstandingly in the last T20 World Cup and that was due to the preparation we had. We don't have [assistant coach] Ali Maiden anymore, who bowled brilliant leg-spin, but we've got a few coaches who have bowled it brilliantly and we've been really clear on how we're going to do things against her. She's a massive threat for them and is an improved bowler since the last World Cup, so for us to be successful, we're going to have to play her and all their spinners well. That's going to be key in the game," England skipper Knight was quoted as saying by ICC.

"It feels like we've built some momentum, we were gutted after the South Africa game and we've been playing knockout cricket since game two, that stands us in very good stead going into the knockout stages. We've started to get some players in real form and the players that aren't, you feel like they're just round the corner and can produce in a massive game such as the semi-final,” she added.

With rain forecast for parts of the day in Sydney on Thursday, it is likley that Knight will make some changes in batting order.

"We'll have a chat about what our strategy is. We'll be quite clear about how we want to do things but we'll have to be flexible. A lot of us have played in rain-reduced games before and it's all about who switches on the fastest, who adapts very quickly and who ultimately performs in that short space. It can be quite manic if it is a rain-reduced game, we're make sure as a team that we're quite calm with the way we want to do things. The good thing about our team is that we've got a lot of variety, a lot of different skillsets bowling and batting, so we feel like we can adapt to any situation we're thrown in to. You just have to focus on the job you've got to do, focus on winning ball by ball and trying to keep really calm, really clear and really simple,” Knight said.