Indian team returned to the field with victoryImage Credit source: PTI
The Indian women’s cricket team, which returned to the field exactly 48 days after winning the World Cup for the first time, showed the attitude of a champion as soon as it arrived. After winning the title of ICC Women’s World Cup 2025, Team India easily defeated Sri Lanka in its very first match. In the first match of the 5 T20 match series that started on Sunday in Visakhapatnam, captain Harmanpreet Kaur’s team defeated Sri Lanka by 8 wickets on the basis of strong bowling. Star all-rounder Deepti Sharma, who was the player of the tournament of the World Cup, showed wonders with her bowling, after which Jemimah Rodriguez played an excellent half-century.
After winning the title in the ODI World Cup on 2 November, Team India took the field for the first time on 21 December. Although this series is being held in T20 format, Team India showed the same dominance here as it did in the World Cup. A major reason for this was the presence of most of the members of the title winning team in the squad of this format. However, Team India gave 20-year-old spinner Vaishnavi Sharma a chance to make her international debut in this match and the young bowler impressed by giving only 16 runs in 4 overs.
Sri Lanka batted first in this match and it became quite clear in the third over itself that it would be difficult for them to score a big score. Fast bowler Kranti Goud, who bowled effectively in the World Cup, bowled out Sri Lankan captain Chamri Atapattu in this over. After this, the Sri Lankan players kept batting at the pace of an ODI match and somehow managed to reach 121 runs at the loss of 6 wickets in 20 overs. For that, opener Vishmi Gunaratne scored 39 runs in 43 balls. For India, Deepti took 1 wicket for 20 runs in 4 overs, while Kranti and Shri Charani also got 1-1 success.
However, Team India’s counter innings could not start in a good manner and opener Shefali Verma was out in the second over itself. But after this Smriti Mandhana and Jemima took the innings forward. Smriti (25), who is returning to the field after recovering from the grief of marriage breakdown, hit some amazing shots and made a half-century partnership with Jemima. But she could not take her innings much further. After that, Jemima along with captain Harmanpreet Kaur (15) took the team to the target in 14.4 overs. Jemima continued her excellent form and scored unbeaten 69 runs (10 fours) in 44 balls.