Smriti Mandhana starred with the bat as she played a brilliant knock of 49-ball 79.
The Women in Blue defeated Australia in the Super Over after the scores were tied at 187. With this victory, they also levelled the five-match series 1-1.
“Happy to see such wickets prepared for women’s cricket, you’ll get high scores, high run chases. I think this is one of the most entertaining games we’ve all been a part of,” Mandhana said at the post-match presentation.
“When they were batting, I realised it was an amazing wicket, I had my eyes on a big score. Didn’t want to make the same mistake as the last innings,” added Mandhana, who earned the Player-of-the-Match award for her 49-ball 79.
Speaking after the game, India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said her troops learnt a lot after suffering a nine-wicket thrashing in the series opener.
“We backed ourselves. If someone could get a bit more, then we could have got even 200. So that was the plan today, to back ourselves,” she said.
Harmanpreet also commended wicketkeeper-batter Richa Ghosh, who stayed unbeaten on 13-ball 26 during the chase.
“I was always backing her, even when she wasn’t getting runs. Today we saw what we could do with her power hitting,” she said.
On the other hand, Australia captain Alyssa Healy rued her team’s poor fielding after the heartbreaking loss.
“Fielding is something we need to keep working at, we gave too many runs today. Bowling was better today, because this wicket was too easy to bat on, nothing for the bowlers. Fielding is the only thing we need to improve from today.” Healy said, “Missed a bit with the ball tonight and they cashed in. What a great advertisment for women’s cricket this has been, with 40,000 people here tonight.”
“I think we missed a bit with the ball, gave them a chase. We did well to hang in there in the end and get it to the Super Over, India were all over us in that chase. We fought well to get us to that position, fought till the very end.”
(With PTI inputs)