Team India has won all the matches in the series so farImage Credit source: PTI
Team India has taken one more step towards the clean sweep of Sri Lanka in the T20 series. Harmanpreet Kaur’s team India, which had already captured the series by winning the first three matches, defeated Sri Lanka by 30 runs in the fourth T20 on the basis of explosive batting. With this, India took a 4-0 lead in the 5-match series and now it is just one win away from wiping out Sri Lanka. Smriti Mandhana, Shefali Verma and Richa Ghosh were the stars of victory in the fourth T20, who with their explosive batting took the team to a record score of 221 runs, in response to which Sri Lanka got bundled out for 191 runs.
This match was also played in Thiruvananthapuram, where Team India had won the third match. In this fourth match played on Sunday 28th December, Team India came out to bat first in the series for the first time and the batsmen took full advantage of it. Vice-captain Smriti Mandhana, who was ineffective in the last three matches, finally established her dominance and scored a quick 80 runs. Whereas Shefali scored 79 runs, scoring a half-century in the third consecutive match.
There was an excellent opening partnership of 162 runs in 15.2 overs for the first wicket between Mandhana and Shefali, on the basis of which the role of a big score was prepared. After this, the work of reaching the record score was done by Richa Ghosh, who was promoted and sent to the third position. Richa proved this decision 100 percent right by scoring 40 runs in just 16 balls and Team India made its highest score in T20 cricket.
The reply from Sri Lanka was also explosive and in the power play itself, Hasini Perera along with captain Chamari Atapattu took the team to 60 runs. After Perera’s dismissal, captain Atapattu made the match exciting by taking the team beyond 100 runs in just 12 overs. But as soon as Atapattu was out after scoring a half-century, the brakes were put on Sri Lanka’s innings. From here the Indian bowlers made a comeback in the match and established their hold.
The most important role in this was played by 20 year old spinner Vaishnavi Sharma, who took the wickets of Atapattu and fast scoring Harshita Samarawickrama. Ultimately the entire team was able to reach only 191 runs after losing 6 wickets in 20 overs, which is the biggest score of this team in T20 cricket. But even this was not enough to give him victory. Ultimately, with the win by 30 runs, Team India took a 4-0 lead in the series. For India, Vaishnavi took 2 wickets for 24 runs in 4 overs.