Indian Women’s Cricket team kicked off their 2021 Women’s ODI Cricket World Cup campaign yesterday against arch-rivals Pakistan. They ended up winning the match pretty easily by a huge margin of 107 runs and marked their entry into the World Cup. India W is one of the favourites to win the Women’s ODI World Cup this year.
India Women won the toss and elected to bat first. Although opener Shafali Verma departed very early on duck, her partner Smriti Mandhana made sure that India get a good start. Her partnership with int at 3 Deepti Sharma was very important for India as it gave them just the start they needed. Smriti Mandhana scored 52 runs while Deepti Sharma scored 40 runs.
After a poor display by India’s middle order, Sneh Rana and Pooja Vasrakar’s partnership was fabulous and they scored almost half of Team India’s runs. Sneh scored 53 off 28 deliveries while Pooja Vastrakar scored 67 off 59.
India Women thus reached a respectable total of 244/7 in 50 overs and gave Pakistan the target of 245.
Coming on to chase, Pakistan never found a grip on the match as all of their batters failed to impress. Opener Sidra Ameen, who scored 30 runs in 64 deliveries, was their highest runscorer and you can guess how poorly Pakistan played from the statistic.
One of the best performers from Team India in the second innings was a 19-years old Wicket-keeper Richa Ghosh who was brilliant behind the wickets. A particular stumping that she did to send Aliya Riaz back to the pavilion is being talked about a lot.
Richa waited for Aliya to step out and just when she did it, the youngster hit the stumps and sent her off. Her cunning piece of wicketkeeping reminded many of former Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.