The Gold Medal match at Commonwealth Games saw all the ups and downs and all the shines and shadows till Australia won the match by 9 runs.
In this historical match, Australian women won the toss and elected to bat first. The team did not start well and lost its first wicket at just 9 runs when the opener Alyssa Healy returned to the pavilion after scoring 7 off 12. Then Beth Mooney took the charge for Australia and scored 61 runs in 41 balls with the help of 8 fours. Meg Lanning(36) and Ashleigh Gardner(25) took Australia to a fighting total of 161 runs at the loss of 8 wickets.
For India, Renuka Singh and Sneh Rana got 2 wickets each, while Deepti Sharma and Radha Yadav managed to get 1-1 wickets in their kitty.
While chasing the target of 162 runs, Indian women’s cricket team got 2 back to back setbacks when Smriti Mandhana and Shefali Verma returned to the Pavillion when the team was standing at 22 runs. After this, Captain Harmanpreet Kaur took the charge and started building an innings with Jemimah Rodrigues. They both made sure that India should not get fragile at any point of the match and crossed the team to 100 run mark. After this, Rodrigues returned to the Pavilion scoring 33 runs.
However, the continuous debacle for India bought Australia into the game. The Australian bowlers did not give any chance to Indian batters after the departure of Harmanpreet.
India needed 11 runs in last 6 balls but Jess Jonassen made sure that Australia will go with Gold in hand. She made 2 dismissals which includes a run out in the last over and India fall short of 9 runs.
For Australia, Ashleigh Gardner clinched 3 wickets, while Megan Schutt bagged 2 wickets.
