The Indian women’s team has started the England tour with a win. The team defeated the English team by 97 runs in the first T20 match on Saturday night. With this win, the Indian team took a 1-0 lead in the 5-match series. In Nottingham, England’s captain won the toss and chose to bowl. Batting first, the Indian team scored 210 runs for 5 wickets in 20 overs. Chasing the target of 211 runs, the host team was all out for 113 runs in 14.5 overs.
Shri Charani, who was making her debut for the Indian team, took 4 wickets. Meanwhile, captain Smriti Mandhana played a century of 112 runs. Mandhana has become the highest individual scorer for India in a T20 match. She has surpassed Harmanpreet Kaur’s record of 103 runs. Mandhana (78 runs) has set the record for most runs from boundaries for India in a T20 innings. She surpassed Harmanpreet Kaur’s (76 runs) record. Mandhana has become the only Indian woman cricketer to score a century in all three formats of cricket i.e. Test, ODI International and T-20.
Returning to the team, Shefali Verma and captain Smriti Mandhana gave a strong start to the Indian team batting after losing the toss. The team scored 47 runs without loss in 6 overs of the powerplay. When Shefali got out after scoring 20 runs in the 9th over, the score of Team India was 77 runs. After Verma got out, Smriti along with Harleen Deyal took the score past 170. Harleen got out after scoring 43 runs. Captain Mandhana faced 62 balls in her innings. She scored runs at a strike rate of 180.64 with the help of 15 fours and 3 sixes. Laurence Bell took 3 wickets for England.
England, chasing a target of 211 runs, had a bad start. The team lost the wickets of the openers at a score of 9 runs. Sophia Dunkley was out after scoring 7 runs, while Danielle Nicole Wyatt-Hodge could not even open the account.