Australia's wicketkeeper batter Alyssa Healy admitted that her team's approach against Indian leg-spinner Poonam Yadav left a lot to be desired as the defending champions failed to cross the line in the Women's T20 World Cup opener in Sydney this Friday (February 21). 

The home team at 2/67 looked all set to overhaul the visitors' modest 132-run total, with Healy herself leading the way via a fine half-century, but once Poonam was introduced into the attack, the Aussies lost a flurry of cheap wickets to be held significantly back in their quest. 

She bagged astonishing figures of 4/19 to help the Indian team pull off an unlikely victory against the mighty hosts and tournament favourites. 

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"We probably didn't chase as smart as we have in the past," Healy told reporters. "Full credit to Poonam Yadav, I thought she bowled quite cleverly, we prepared for her but we didn't play her very well and lost our way in the middle."

"To be fair, I didn't know she was injured (during the tri-series). I thought it was tactical, not letting us face her."

Rather than taking the game deep, the Aussie batters looked to take Poonam on, which played right into her hands. "Most of the wickets that fell today were batters playing across the line in both innings, so for us we'll have a look at that and say 'we didn't adapt'," Healy added. 

"We didn't underestimate her, we just didn't play smartly. Taking our medicine and attacking the other end would have been a good option."

Perhaps to try and make a statement earlier on and boost their net run-rate, Australia always wanted to keep attacking the Indian spinners and even made a tactical shuffle in its batting order for the same, with skipper Meg Lanning returning to No.3 and Rachael Haynes being promoted at No.4 to keep the left and right combination going. But at the end, only two of the team's batters reached the double figures. 

"We have a lot of left-right combinations and we like to think that can combat a lot of spin attacks but it didn't pay off tonight, so we'll review that," Healy said.

"Upon reviewing that later there'll be a few comments on how smart we approached that," she added. "At one point we needed a run a ball, and to let that push out to eight or nine isn't ideal."

(Inputs from cricket.com.au)