Sharjah, Oct 13 Renuka Singh and Deepti Sharma took two wickets each to restrict Australia to 151 for eight in a do-or-die Women’s T20 World Cup match at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Sunday.
India suffered a setback even before the game began. Asha Shobna injured her knee during the warm-up after the toss. The Australia captain agreed to a late change at the request of the match referee and Radha Yadav was included in the playing 11.
The second change in India’s team was Pooja Vastrakar, who replaced S. Sanjana. Australia did not have their regular captains Alyssa Healy and Tayla Vlaeminck in the team, who were replaced by Grace Harris and Darcie Brown.
Winning the toss and batting first, Australia could not make much use of the powerplay. Renuka Singh, Shreyanka Patil and Pooja Vastrakar bowled tight line lengths. The pitch was slow and the ball was staying low due to which the Australian batsmen could not open their hands.
Grace Harris started by hitting a four towards point off Renuka’s ball on the second ball of the innings. Harmanpreet gave the second over to Shreyanka who bowled four dot balls to Beth Mooney and conceded just two runs in the over.
In the next over, Mooney, who looked under pressure, tried to open her hands but was caught by Radha at backward point. Renuka got Georgia Wareham LBW on the next ball to get her second wicket on consecutive balls. Stand-in captain Tahlia McGrath then took the innings forward with Grace.
Puja bowled the fourth over of the innings and conceded six runs. Australia’s score after six overs was 37/2.
Arundhati Reddy came on the attack in the seventh over and kept the pressure on the Australian batsmen. In the next over, Tahlia and Grace hit fours off Pooja and added a total of 10 runs.
Deepti Sharma started with a brilliant over and restricted Australia to 65/2 in 10 overs. Meanwhile, Tahlia became the fastest Australian woman player to complete 1000 T20 runs. She completed this feat in 37 innings, one less than Meg Lanning.
India restricted Australia to just 151 runs for the loss of eight wickets in the stipulated 20 overs. Renuka Singh and Deepti Sharma took two wickets each.
