Women’s T20 World Cup: India demolish Lanka, go second on table

Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur fifties power India to highest total of tournament before bowlers make short work of Sri Lanka

Kolkata: Fourteen balls to find the first boundary looked like an unsettling premise to a T20 game India were banking on to send the net run rate through the roof. Forty-one for no loss after the powerplay didn’t exactly make that feeling go away. The Dubai pitch was slow, the outfield slower and Sri Lanka had deployed seven bowlers—five of them slow-arm—with even the faster ones taking the pace off the ball. India kept believing though, and things started falling into place soon.

Smriti Mandhana plays a shot against Sri Lanka during their T20 World Cup match in Dubai on Wednesday. (AP)

Smriti Mandhana hit a breezy fifty, skipper Harmanpreet Kaur upped the ante with an audacious 27-ball fifty to guide India to the highest total of this T20 World Cup, Radha Yadav took a blinder second ball of the chase before Shreyanka Patil made the experienced Chamari Athapaththu edge to Deepti Sharma at first slip, and that was more or less that for Sri Lanka. Arundhati Reddy and Asha Sobhana finished with three wickets apiece, and rounding off their fine bowling display was a more heartening fielding performance in one of India’s most comprehensive wins ever. Needing to win by 45 or more runs to move ahead of New Zealand, India ended up with an 82-run victory—the highest ever in T20 World Cup history—that gave them a net run rate of 0.560.

Second on the points table now, with only Australia left to face on Sunday, India are probably finally hitting the stride they were aiming for. “When you play good cricket you always feel well,” said Kaur at the post-match presentation. “Today all the boxes were ticked, we have been talking about our fielding and we took all our catches and that’s something very important to us.” Kaur said net run rate featured prominently in their discussions in the buildup to this match, but they were not trying to get ahead of themselves. “We did discuss before the game if we are batting first what’s the target we want to set and if we are fielding what should be the score, but these wickets are tricky. In between we lost two wickets back to back. Today a lot of things went according to plan; we were thinking of 160 and we posted 170.”

Margins like this often don’t tell the entire story, like how there was a phase India just couldn’t seem to connect the ball properly. Keeping two outfielders on the leg-side while making their slow bowlers target the fourth stump, Sri Lanka were making India grind for their runs. Visibly in despair after repeatedly failing to pierce the covers, Shafali Verma had to manufacture shots, only for Sri Lanka to hit back by checking her advance. Only off the 14th ball she faced did Mandhana hit her fist boundary—clearing her front leg and clobbering Sugandika Kumari down the ground. Three balls later, Mandhana was away, skipping down the pitch and hitting Inoka Ranaweera over long-on for India’s first six of the tournament.

Seventy-eight for no loss after 10 overs, and it looked like the wheels were slowly turning. Till India lost two wickets in two balls. First to go was Mandhana, run out after failing to beat a clean throw from the deep. Next ball, Verma came down the track but got a leading edge off Athapaththu. Crippling blows in the context of the game given this wasn’t an easy pitch to adapt to for new batters, but Kaur was on war mode. A strike rate of 192.59 will attest to the blinding rate at which Kaur assaulted Sri Lanka’s bowlers but for sheer power and placement too, Kaur’s innings was peerless.

Her first eight deliveries were like a prolonged theatre of wait and watch with Kaur cutting, driving and trying to work the ball off her legs. Till Kumari gifted a low full toss that Kaur gladly carted over mid-wicket for her first boundary. One ball later, she shuffled across the stumps for a slog sweep, picking up her first six. Stunned by the counterattack, Sri Lanka tried to make Kaur work for her runs by playing with their lengths. This is where her awareness shone through.

So, when Ama Kanchana tried a back of the hand full length delivery down the leg, Kaur cooly guided it to the fine-leg boundary. Athapaththu tossed one well outside off-stump, but Kaur rocked back and smashed it over the cover fielder for a boundary. It prompted Lanka to go fuller around off-stump, but Kaur moved across her stumps to swipe it through deep midwicket, perfectly dissecting two deep fielders for another four. The blockhole was targeted too, but Kaur just hung back and dug it out over the bowler’s head. “It was one of the days when I was in my zone,” said Kaur. “Whenever the ball was in my zone, I went hard. I was only thinking about the positives.”