Women's Cricket
Indian women's cricket team clean sweep Bangladesh at their home
India won the final match against Bangladesh by 21 runs to complete the cleansweep over the hosts in the 5-match series.
Indian women's cricket team cleanswept Bangladesh in a 5-match T20I series in Bangladesh.
The Indian women's cricket team dominated the five-match T20I series against Bangladesh to clean-sweep the host after a 21-run victory in the final T20I match of the series at the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium in Bangladesh on Thursday.
Captain Harmanpreet Kaur won the toss and opted to bat first. India scored a total of 156-5 in their given 20 overs and then the bowlers did the rest of the work and stopped Bangladesh at 135-6 to mark their 5-0 win in the series.
Radha Yadav was awarded the "Player of the Match" for her superb spell of 3 for 24 in her quota of 4 overs. She also won the "Player of the Series" for her wonderful performance as she picked up 10 wickets in five matches.
The explosive Indian opener Shafali Verma had another early exit in the series as she was caught out in the 5th over after playing a small cameo of 14 runs for 14 balls. After this early exit, her opening partner Smriti Mandhana steadied the play with Dayalan Hemalatha to take the Indian innings back on track.
But in the eighth over, Smriti got out on a LBW decision after playing a good 33-run knock. Harmanpreet (30) then took charge alongside an explosive Hemalatha (37) to build up a 60-run partnership and lead the team to a total of 156 with the help of some late flourish from Richa Ghosh (28).
Bangladesh had a poor start to the chase as they lost their two wickets at the score of 26 with one wicket each for Titas Sadhu and Radha Yadav. Rubya Haider alongside captain Nigar Sultana tried to solidify the innings after this early setback.
But the in-form Radha Yadav dismissed both of them in the same 9th over to derail the Bangladesh innings. Bangladesh found a ray of hope in the match from a 57-run partnership for the 7th wicket between Ritu Moni and Shorifa Khatun.
Asha Shobana hit the final nail in Bangladesh's inning as she clean-bowled the set batter Ritu Moni (37) in the 17th over to put the final breaks in the innings. The late efforts of Shorifa and Rabeya Khan were in vain as Bangladesh suffered the 21-run defeat in this final T20I.
Smriti Mandhana ended the tournament as the leading run-scorer as she scored 116 runs in the five matches closely followed by Dayalan Hemalatha on second with 109 runs but in four matches.
