The Women in Blue are getting increasingly ruthless. Ask Sri Lanka.
The Lankans were crushed by Harmanpreet Kaur’s women yet again. The Lankan batters had crawled to below-par scores in the first and second T20Is at Visakhapatnam, leaving little for their bowlers to defend. It was no different in the third T20I at the Greenfield Stadium here on Friday.
After restricting the visitors to 112 for seven, India reached home with eight wickets and 6.4 overs to spare.
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They have thus won the five-match series 3-0 with two games in hand. Not a bad show at all to follow up that spectacular ODI World Cup victory last month.
Renuka Thakur put the Sri Lankan batters on the back foot with an incisive spell.
Renuka Thakur put the Sri Lankan batters on the back foot with an incisive spell. | Photo Credit: NIRMAL HARINDRAN
This match too began with Harmanpreet winning the toss. Can the Indian captain do any wrong these days? Just as the Lankan women can’t do anything right. They did get a decent start on this night, though.
Hasini Perera and Chamari put on 25 inside five overs for the first wicket, with the skipper opting to play the supporting role. Hasini seemed in good nick, as she hit a couple of fours in the first over on the off-side, off Renuka Singh, who, in fact, went for 12.
This was the Queen of Swing’s comeback to the T20I cricket after a year. And she made it count, taking four for 21 from her four overs, one of which was a maiden. She began by removing the dangerous-looking Hasini, who played away from her body and edged to Deepti Sharma at short third-man.
This would be Deepti’s night, too. She claimed three for 18 to equal Megan Schutt’s record as the world’s leading wicket-taker in women’s T20Is.
They have 151 wickets each. Among her victims was Kavisha Dilhari, whose 40-run partnership for the fifth wicket with Imesha Dulani was the highest of the Lankan innings.
The question was how soon India’s star-studded batting line-up would chase that target down and who would shine the brightest.
Opener Shafali Verma was not going to let that opportunity go. She smashed an unbeaten 42-ball 79 (11x4, 3x6) to delight a goodly crowd.
She was involved in two significant partnerships that batted the Lankans out of the match, and the series – 40 for the second wicket with Jemimah Rodrigues and 48 for the unbroken third wicket with Harmanpreet.
When Shafali gets going, there aren’t too many better sights in women’s cricket.
