In other news, the Indian women cricket team has emerged victorious over their New Zealand counterpart in a three ODI series in New Zealand by 2-1. The team is now up for three T20 matches starting from 6th Feb where their hopes will be high. India sealed the series in the second match and New Zealand won the last consolation match. Interesting part remained the fact that all three matches were one-sided with India winning first two with 9 and 8 wickets while the host emerged victorious in third one by 8 wickets. This became the first Indian side to win a bilateral series in New Zealand.
In the first match at Napier where India won the toss and justified their decision to bowl getting the host got all out on 192 in 48 overs where Poonam Yadav gave a major blow to the New Zealand top order and claimed three wickets. This was chased by India in 33 overs at a loss of 1 wicket of Smriti Mandhana who scored 105. Jemimah Rodrigues contributed 81 being second top scorer of the game. Player of the match was awarded to Smriti Mandhana. The second match was also won by India where they restricted the host at an even lesser score of 161 in 44 overs which was chased at a loss of two wickets in 35 overs. Jhulan Goswami again clinched three wickets and Ekta Bisht settled for two. Smriti Mandhana (90) and Mitali Raj (63) played the match-winning knocks and Smriti again getting the player match.
New Zealand did dominate the last consolation game which they won by 8 wickets. This time India went on to bat first and was restricted for 149 in 44 overs which was comfortably chase down by the opponents for loss of two wickets. Both the India openers could not do well with Smriti getting only 1 and Jemimah getting out on 12. Deepti Sharma got a half-century in the first opportunity to stay on the field for some time. Mitali Raj also got out on 9. The score was chased down by the host for loss of two wickets with Suzie Bates and Amy Satterthwaite getting half centuries. This was also Mitali Raj’s 200 match but she could not make it special. Anna Peterson won the player of the match for her 4 wickets sparing 28 runs.
The player of the series was won by Smriti Mandhana who got a century in the first match and then scored a 90 in the second. This has made her skip three places in the ODI rankings and becoming the No 1 batswomen (if that’s the word) in the world. She is followed by Australians Ellyse Perry and Meg Lanning. Mandhana has been fantastic and has scored two centuries and eight half-centuries in 15 games. Completing the top five, New Zealand skipper Amy Satterthwaite who smashed consecutive half-centuries in the series against India flew 10 places taking the 4th position in the list while Indian skipper Mitali Raj moved a position down as she only made 1 half century in the current series.
