India had a terrible start to South Africa’s tour to India’s ODI series, their first ODI outing since 2019 as the visitors went on to win the match with ease by nine wickets.
This was India’s first international match since last year’s World Cup T20I final on March 8th 2020. Since then, India didn’t even have a domestic tournament but had a four-match Women’s T20 Challenge.
South Africa, who are coming into this ODI series after an excellent series sweep over Pakistan, showed a better intent than the hosts as they dominated right from the toss.
Their pacers Kapp, Khaka and Ismail removed then India top-order but Mithali Raj and Harmanpreet Kaur steadied the innings for the team.
Kaur, playing her 100th ODI, began the innings slowly and soon she began to take off. Unfortunately, after a couple of boundaries, she found Ismail at the long off and she had to go for 40.
Mithali Raj then slowly built up a partnership with Deepti Sharma and got to her yet another fifty and got out very soon.
Right after Mithali got out, India had lost their track and went on to lose multiple wickets. From 102 for 4, the team ended with 177 for 9.
The middle-order and the lower-order couldn’t convert the dots to singles and that caused major trouble.
In return, South Africa seemed like they batted on a different surface as Lee and Wolvaardt smashed every single bowler of the hosts.
They added 169 runs for the first wicket, their best in ODIs. Wolvaardt was the first wicket to fall as she got out for LBW to Goswami but it was just too late for India.
Goswami went on to remove the stand-in skipper Luus as well but Lee was just too good today and took her team home with ease.
INDIA- 177 FOR 9
Mithali Raj- 50
S Ismail- 3/28
SOUTH AFRICA-178 FOR 2
Lizelle Lee- 83*
Laura Wolvaardt-80
Jhulan Goswami- 2/38
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