Following up her successive hundreds with a blistering 90, Smriti Mandhana led India’s 3-0 sweep in the ODI series over South Africa, scripting a comfortable six-wicket win in the third and final match in Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium. Arundhati Reddy-inspired bowling comeback helped India cut short South Africa’s bright start to keep them to just 215/8. Mandhana then cashed in on the visitors’ loose bowling under lights, and combined it with flawless stroke play all around the park to set up the comfortable victory with 9.2 overs to spare.
Trailing 0-2, South Africa still had two crucial ICC WOmen’s ODI Championship points to look forward to on Sunday (June 23). But, return favours and miscommunication caused the downfall of their top and middle-order, albeit not before the openers had frustrated the hosts for a breakthrough for more than 20 overs and with a century stand.
After a watchful start to get her eye in, skipper Laura Wolvaardt cut loose with a hat-trick of boundaries against Pooja Vastrakar – first one down the ground and then one on either side of the strip – putting on display her full range of strokes. A pull through backward square leg for a fourth boundary helped make it an expensive 17-run final over to powerplay, of which South Africa scored 46 without loss.
Playing the second fiddle, Tazmin Brits finally freed her arms as she gave Radha Yadav the charge and tonked a six into cow corner. At the end of the same over, Wolvaardt reached her 32nd ODI fifty, and her sixth against India, in just 45 deliveries. She raised a century opening stand not long after, but a brilliant return take at knee height from Arundhati saw the end of the South African captain, who was lured into an uppish drive. Brits perished in the following over, run-out on 38 after a terrible communication breakdown in the middle with Marizanne Kapp. The opener set out for a single, watching neither the ball nor her ball-watching partner Kapp, who didn’t budge an inch. Only three overs ago Brits had survived a run-out scare attempting a tight single.
Arundhati pulled off an even better, even lower blinder – again in her followthrough – to send Anneke Bosch back cheaply for her second wicket of the spell. At the other end, a returning Shreyanka Patil – in the XI for legspinner Asha Sobhana – switched to round the wicket angle against Kapp and reaped instant rewards, forcing the centurion from the previous match to drive the fuller length ball and holding on to an excellent return catch when the batter took the bait.
The visitors had only just begun to recover from a dramatic collapse of 4 for 18 when Vastrakar cleaned up Sune Luus after drinks. From reaching the team’s 100 at the start of the 20th, South Africa had crawled to only 171 by the start of the death-overs phase. However, the brief partnership brewing between Nondumiso Shangase and Nadine de Klerk came unstuck as a result of another communication failure. After driving one to mid-off, de Klerk ran for a tight single with her partner barely interested and hence only reluctantly stepping out of the crease at the non-striker’s end when Richa Ghosh collected the throw from Deepti and knocked the bails over. In the following over, Deepti knocked back the stumps of de Klerk and Nonkululeko Mlaba in successive deliveries, rounding off her miserly spell of 2 for 27. Two new batters in the middle meant there was no room for late fireworks but an expensive final over from Vastrakar – worth 14 – did allow the ninth-wicket pair to take South Africa to a fighting 215 courtesy their vital 37-run stand.
A mizzle delayed the start of India’s chase but the home team’s openers wasted little time thereafter. Searching for runs in her comeback ODI series, Shafali Verma got going with a couple of crisp drives on the off-side off South Africa’s new-ball pair, and the in-form Mandhana followed suit in her hat-trick of fours off de Klerk’s third over. Double bowling change ensued but the opening pair kept fetching a boundary an over to raise the half-century stand in nine overs. However, against the run of play, Verma threw away a solid start slicing a flat, low catch to backward point in a half-hearted attempt to play an aerial cut.
Mlaba found some turn and kept the runs in check from one end, with little support at the other though. She did concede a boundary each to Mandhana and Priya Punia but followed up the 10-run over with a maiden. While the sublime timing and driving were the highlights of Mandhana’s yet another top-scoring effort, she danced down the track to Shangase to bring up her half-century in just 49 deliveries. Also on national comeback, Punia too showed intent from ball one as she combined for a fifty stand with her vice-captain. Unfortunately though, her cameo too ended in a pretty similar fashion as Verma’s – an attempted cut offering a low catch to Bosch at backward point once more.
Captain Harmanpreet played a second fiddle to Mandhana again, contributing a brisk 19 in their 48-run partnership but happy to turn over the strike as Mandhana inched closer to a rare feat that eventually wasn’t meant to be. Dropped on 85, the India vice-captain did claim the record for most runs in a three-match women’s bilateral ODI series with her tally of 343 upon reaching 90 but top-edged a Mlaba delivery next, in an attempted sweep, to fall agonisingly short of what could have been a rare hat-trick of hundreds.
India needed only 45 more off the 19.2 remaining overs from there on, and together Harmanpreet and Jemimah Rodrigues ensured there was no drop in the intensity. Even as Harmanpreet fell on 42, trying to squeeze in a quick single that would have levelled the scores, Richa Ghosh slammed a third-ball six down the ground to take her team over the line.
Brief scores: South Africa 215/8 in 50 overs (Laura Wolvaardt 61, Tazmin Brits 38; Deepti Sharma 2-27, Arundhati Reddy 2-35) lost to India 220/4 in 40.4 overs (Smriti Mandhana 90, Harmanpreet Kaur 42; Ayabonga Khaka 1-38) by 6 wickets
