Dubai, Oct 10: India captain Harmanpreet Kaur and opener Smriti Mandhana paved the way for India’s massive win over Sri Lanka with fine half-centuries in the group stage match.
The Women in Blue piled up a tournament high of 172-3 from their 20 overs before Sri Lanka were dismissed for 90 off the penultimate ball of the match. In the bowling department, Indian fast bowler Arundhati Reddy and leg-spinner Asha Sobhana returned identical figures of 3-19 in their four overs.
India now have two wins in three games ahead of their final group match with six-time champions Australia on Sunday.
Harmanpreet Kaur | India Women captain, said, Haanji, sab theek hai. Uphar wale di meher hai, bas chal raha hai (all is good by God’s grace, going good) (she was referring to her injured neck). When you play good cricket you always feel well, 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. We did discuss before the game, if we are batting first what are the targets you need to set. These pitches are really tricky, we can’t go and execute. Today lot of things went according to plan. We were thinking at least 160 and we set 170-plus. We are at that stage where we have to think about winning and even about NRR. We have to play good cricket first of all, our bowlers are doing well, they (Australia) are a good side and good to see our bowlers giving us wickets, they are in rhythm. As a captain you feel good when the team does well, it is a day to enjoy our success.
Chamari Athapaththu, Sri Lanka Women captain, said, We struggled even in the bowling, we dropped a few catches. Batters did not do their job, especially myself. Top-order got out early and it is tough to chase this. We have to go back to the white board and work on things. The first game is really important for this kind of tournament, it is a low-scoring game and as a batting unit we had to chase that target. The players were down after that first game and I try to lift them, it happens in cricket and we have one game left, we have to play our best cricket against New Zealand. Very happy with my bowling unit, how they bowled in the last two games, not today.