Team India restricted Australia to a small scoreImage Credit source: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
The Indian women’s cricket team, which ended its long wait by winning the ODI World Cup for the first time, is now eyeing becoming T20 champion. Team India, captained by Harmanpreet Kaur, who visited Australia for the first time after becoming the World Champion, has made a strong start. In the very first match of the T20 series, Team India’s bowlers wreaked such havoc that defending champion Australia could not even play the full 20 overs and got bundled out for just 133 runs. Fast bowler Arundhati Reddy did this to him.
On Sunday 15th February, everyone was waiting for the Men’s T20 World Cup match between India and Pakistan in Colombo. A few hours before that, Indian bowlers were wreaking havoc at the Sydney Cricket Ground. In this series being played keeping in mind the preparations for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 to be held in England, Team India put the world champions in trouble. Australian batting collapsed badly in the very first match of Sophie Molineau as the new captain.
Australia, batting first, made a fast start but due to the havoc-wreaking balls of Renuka Singh and Arundhati Reddy, its 5 wickets fell only for 80 runs in 9 overs. Georgia Wareham took charge of the innings and took it past 120 runs, where it seemed that the Australian team would easily cross the score of 150 but then the innings faltered.
When Wareham was out in the 14th over, Australia’s score was 121 runs. But within the next 12 runs, the remaining 4 wickets of the team also fell and the Australian innings was reduced to only 133 runs in 18 overs. For Team India, fast bowler Reddy took the maximum of 4 wickets for just 22 runs in 4 overs, which is also the best performance of his career. Apart from them, Renuka took 2 wickets for 14 runs in 4 overs and spinner Shri Charani also took 2 wickets.
This is only the second time in the history of the Australian cricket team that it has been all out in the first innings of a T20 match at home. Earlier in September 2024, in the match played in Mackay, New Zealand had defeated them in the first innings. But 133 runs against Team India in Sydney is his lowest score. The Australian team was out for 142 runs against New Zealand.
