India defeated Sri Lanka in the fourth match of the ICC Woman’s World Cup 2017 on wednesday, winning their fourth match on the trot and took one more step forward towards clinching a semi-final spot. India defeated Sri Lanka by sixteen runs with another extra ordinary performance from the bowlers by defending a ordinary target of 232/8 and resticted them at just 216 in 50 overs. India has never lost a ODI game from any of its neighbours
Indian captain won the toss and elected to bat first looking for a toal of more than 250 runs. India lost its opener early in the innings following which captain Mithali Raj and Deepti Sharma scored brilliant fifties and put up a parnership of 118. than India lost three wickets in short period of time before Veda Krishnamurthy and Harmanpreet Kaur put up 50 runs for the sixth wicket which took Indian total to 232/8 at the completion of fifty-over.
After that when came into bowl. Experienced Jhulan Goswami gave the first blow to Sri Lanka by removing Hasini Perera in just 5th over of the innings than Indian bowlers kept it tight and didn’t gave away too many runs before leg-spinner Poonam Yadav gave double blow to Lanka by removing dangerous looking Chamari Athapaththu and opener Nipuni Hansika. Poonam Yadav bowled 10 consecutive overs giving away just 23 runs.
Highest scorer from Sri Lanka, Dilani Manodara Surangika (61 off 75 balls) and Shashikala Siriwarden had a partnership of 60 runs for the fourth-wicket before Jhulan Goswami grabbed her second wicket of the innings and fourth wicket of Sri Lanka on the last ball of 39th over at the score of just 130-runs. From there Sri Lanka still had to kade 102 more runs in just 11-overs and there wes no chance that Sri Lanka could have won the match from there.
Mithali praised her all rounders after the match “In the middle overs we really pulled ourselves and the dot balls pushed them to score in the end. Overall, our spinners did quite well, Cricket has evolved over the years because now we need to have more allrounders, with bowlers who can bat in the slog overs and batsmen who can pick some wickets.”
