Harmanpreet Kaur, the Indian captain, once again proved why she is one of the best or if not the best players in the World Cricket as her knock of helps Supernovas win their second consecutive trophy.
After asking Velocity to bat first, Supernovas dominated the initial overs by picking up early wickets, thanks to the fastest bowler of this generation, Lea Tahuhu. She was hitting the right area and was loving it when she was picking up the wickets. Tahuhu had two while Anuja Patil, Nat Schiver, Sophie Devine picked up one each.
When Velocity was 37-5, nobody would have expected them to reach a respectable total of 121. The teen Kerr(36 off 38) and Keeper Verma (40* off 32) slowly started building up a partnership and managed to take the team to the triple figure mark, gave something for the bowlers to bowl at.
In return, the match wasn’t a one-sided contest something even Mithali Raj thought it would be. Instead, the Velocity bowlers started to take the match seriously, to prove to the selectors.
After Aththapattu’s wicket, Priya Punia, the leading run-scorer in the senior T20 challenge played to her strength, scored a good 29, added an important partnership with Jemimah Rodrigues who was looking good as always. After making 22 off 25, she hit one back to Kerr, and she doesn’t drop many. Priya Punia followed her, thanks to Devika Vaidya’s brilliant over.
Probably the underdog of all the overseas players, Bangladesh’s Alam produced two back to back breakthroughs, something she will take home because it was Devine and Sciver who was cleaned up.
Now, it was all left to the captain Harmanpreet Kaur as it was all bowlers the other end. From 10 balls four, Harmanpreet Kaur took her time to analyse but this time she was early to destroy the bowlers, unlike the other day where she left a lot for late.
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Mithali Raj should have given Shikha Pandey an extra over rather than going with Devika Vaidya. Of course, Harmanpreet Kaur’s new-learnt skill of taking on the pacers is helping but when it comes to taking on the spinners, she is already the best. Shikha Pandey would have tried to give a few more dots and that would have added more pressure but yes, Devika has done well and Mithali would have gone with the instincts. After all the smashing, Supernovas needed only 7 from the final over to seal the title.
After making 51 off 37 deliveries. Kerr deceived her to go for a big hit the first ball but she found Hayley Matthews and with 7 off 5, Supernovas needed a saviour and there came Radha Yadav. Credits to Lea Tahuhu as well who guided and pushed Radha to convert singles into twos and thereby making it one run in the final delivery. Radha Yadav found a boundary as the fielder were all in and sealed the match with a jump. Unfortunately, Tahuhu got hurt while celebrating.
Though Velocity lost the match, there were a lot of positives for each player. In fact, for every single player who played the tournament. With a crowd of 13000 under the lights, this match will go down in history maybe not as the best match but as the beginning for something bigger and better.
