India will expect their top-order batters to produce a tidier effort against South Africa in the second women’s ODI here on Wednesday in their quest for an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

India have a 1-0 lead in their hand, courtesy a 143-run win in the first game but the win, as comprehensive as it was, also left some questions unanswered.

The home side rode on Smriti Mandhana’s hundred and a fine spell by spinners to outclass South Africa, but it was not enough to paper over some wide cracks in the batting department.

The most glaring of them is the continued underwhelming ODI outings of opener Shafali Verma. Her last one-day fifty came in 2022, an unbeaten 71, against Sri Lanka at Pallekele.

In the last six matches, the opener’s individual scoresheet reads: 1, 8, 0, 4, 1, 7. The 20-year-old will require a substantial score sooner than later to cling on to her spot.

Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur will also like to have a big score under her belt after notching up 14, 9, 5, 3 and 10 in her last five outings.

Top-order batter Jemimah Rodrigues, who returned from a back injury that forced her to sit out of the T20I series against Bangladesh, too failed to impress.

Rodrigues would like to recapture her 2023 form where she made a couple of 80s and came close to scoring her maiden ODI hundred.

All of them, in fact, can take a cue from vice-captain Mandhana, whose sixth ODI hundred stood out for its studiousness.

Of course, the graceful left-hander has been in good touch in ODIs, as her last 20 innings dating back to February 2022 have fetched seven fifties and two centuries and was dismissed below 10 only thrice.

But returning to the one-day format after playing a string of T20s in the last four months might have been tough for her, and it became all the more difficult because she also had to bail out the team from a precarious 99 for five against the Proteas.

However, Mandhana braved those tests, showing wonderful adaptation of skills and mindset.