Harmanpreet Kaur and India eye Sri Lankan whitewash

The Indian team have won the opening two games in contrasting fashion to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

Indian women’s cricket team captain Harmanpreet Kaur at the toss. Source/PTI

A confident India will look to complete the formalities and assert their supremacy by completing a whitewash of Sri Lanka in the third and final women’s ODI here on Thursday. Playing ODI cricket for the first time since the talismanic Mithali Raj retired from the game, the Indian team won the opening two games in contrasting fashion to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series. The visitors had bagged the preceding T20I series 2-1. Chasing similar targets, India looked much more confident in the second ODI as they galloped to 10-wicket win on Monday.

India controlled all aspects of the game. It was the kind of dominant display expected out of Harmanpreet Kaur and her troops through out the tour of the island nation. After an underwhelming tour by their standards, star openers Smriti Mandhana and Shefali Verma finally joined the party with unbeaten half centuries.
The duo, that had struggled to build a decent partnership and provide electrifying starts in the first ODI and the T20 series, would be keen for an encore in the final game. New full-time skipper Harmanpreet has been India’s most consistent player this series. The all-rounder has shone with the bat, her innings often turning out to be the difference between the two sides.

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While, Indian spinners were ruling the roost on the slow tracks in the T20s, the ODI series has belonged to pacer Renuka Singh, who has picked seven wickets in the two 50-over matches, including a career best 4/28. In the absence of veteran Jhulan Goswami, who has often been the side’s best pacer, Renuka’s performance shows that that young and relatively inexperienced Indian pace unit has potential.

A 3-0 series win will also boost the visitors’ confidence for their next assignment — the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Sri Lanka will, once again, be keen to pick up a conciliatory win like they did in the T20 series. Let down by its batters this series, the Chamari Athapaththu-led side would hope it can navigate the Indian bowling attack better in the dead rubber. On the bowling front, the spin duo of Inoka Ranaweera and Oshadi Ranasinghe have been the stand-out players, doing most of the heavy lifting.

India: Harmanpreet Kaur (C), Smriti Mandhana (VC), Shafali Verma, Yastika Bhatia (wk), S Meghana, Deepti Sharma, Poonam Yadav, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Simran Bahadur, Richa Ghosh (wk), Pooja Vastrakar, Meghna Singh, Renuka Singh, Taniya Bhatia (wk), Harleen Deol.

Sri Lanka: Chamari Athapaththu (c), Nilakshi de Silva, Kavisha Dilhari, Vishmi Gunaratne, Ama Kanchana, Hansima Karunaratne, Achini Kulasuriya, Sugandika Kumari, Harshitha Samarawickrama, Hasini Perera, Udeshika Prabodhani, Oshadi Ranasinghe Inoka Ranaweera, Sathya Sandeepani, Anushka Sanjeewani, Malsha Shehani,Tharika Sewwandi.

Match starts 10:00 AM IST.

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