Star batsman Smriti Mandhana, the architect of India’s victory over Australia in the second women’s T20 on Sunday, described the match as one of the most entertaining matches she’s been a part of.
India won the match via Super Over after the scores were tied at 187 to take the five match series to 1-1.
“Glad to see such wickets prepared for women’s cricket, you get high scores, fast chases. I think this is one of the most entertaining games we’ve all participated in,” said Mandhana during the post-game presentation.
“When they were batting I realized it was a great wicket, I had my eyes on a big score. I didn’t want to make the same mistake as the last innings,” said Mandhana, who was named player of the match for her 79 off 49 balls.
She said everyone on the Indian team enjoyed chasing goals, but the team “needs to work on totals as well”.
India captain Harmanpreet Kaur said her players learned a lot from the previous game, which the home side lost by nine wickets.
“We supported ourselves. If someone could have gotten a little more, we could have even gotten 200. So that was the plan today, to support ourselves,” she said.
About Richa Ghosh making 26 not off 13 balls, Kaur said: “I always supported her even when she didn’t get any runs. Today we saw what we could do with her power hitting.
“Fielden is something we need to keep working on, we gave too many runs today. Bowling went better today as this wicket was too easy to save, nothing for the bowlers. Fielding is the only thing we need to improve from today. Australia captain Alyssa Healy said: “Missed a little tonight with the ball and they made money. What a great advertisement for women’s cricket this was, with 40,000 people here tonight.
“I think we missed a bit with the ball, gave them a chase. We did well to hang on and get the Super Over in the end, India was all over us in that chase. We fought well to get ourselves into that position, fought to the end.