On a historic occasion, Indian women defeated England by seven wickets to lift their maiden under-19 World Cup that was played in South Africa’s Potchefstroom on Sunday.
Asked to bat first, England were bowled out for a meagre total of 68 runs. India successfully chased down the total after losing the wickets of Shafali Verman (15 runs off 11 balls) and Shweta Sehrawat ( 5 runs off 6 balls). However, G Trisha (24 off 29 balls) and Soumya Tiwari (24 off 37 balls) built up a strong partnership of 46 runs to make sure that India win the cup.
Earlier, England‘s batswomen were getting out at regular intervals amid tight Indian bowling and fielding. While most of the English batswomen could not reach the two-figure mark, the only notable contribution came from Ryana MacDonald-Gay (19 off 24 balls). Other batswomen, Alexa Stonehouse and Sophia Smale, both of whom scored 11 runs each.
For India, Titas Sandhu, Archana Devi, Parshavi Chopra, took two wickets each, while Mannat Kashyap, Shafali Verma and Sonam Yadav took one wicket each. Sandhu was declared the man of the match for taking two wickets for just six runs.
The Women in Blue were in the driver’s seat throughout the match. At one stage, England was 46/6 in the 12th over . It was during this time that Shafali decided to bowl. However, she was hit by a boundary by Stonehouse. However, Soumya soon took the wicket of Josephine Groves, leaving England at 53 for 7 at that stage. Both Shafali and Richa joined together to put up more pressure on the English batswomen, with the latter putting up a superb stumbling effort.
The victory has brought joy to lakhs of cricket fans back home with many being glued to the television sets to watch the match live. Many also saw the match live on the Discovery + Hotstar app. The match had earlier started at 5:15 pm (IST).
