Shock and awe: Harmanpreet’s Women in Blue produced a commanding display to blank South Africa 3-0.
| Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K
The 3-0 sweep of South Africa in the ODI series that concluded on Sunday couldn’t have come at a better time for India.
Apart from helping the team banish the bad memories from the 0-3 loss to Australia at the start of the year, it has set the ball rolling on India’s preparation for the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh later this year.
Though T20 format-specific skills weren’t necessarily put to test, it provided an opportunity to evaluate players’ form and fitness, try different batting and bowling combinations and assess overall fielding standards.
Smriti Mandhana came out of this with flying colours, scoring 117, 136 and 90 in her three outings. Apart from her pleasing strokeplay, what stood out was her endurance. India batted for a total of 140.4 overs across the three games and Smriti was at the crease during 122.3 of those.
Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur was back among the runs too, scoring an excellent hundred in the second match, her first since September 2022. But the form of Shafali Verma — 52 runs in three innings — was worrying.
However, with India scheduled to play three T20Is in Chennai against the Proteas after the one-off Test, the 20-year-old is expected to get her mojo back, for the shortest format is her safe space. India tried D. Hemalatha and Priya Punia at No. 3, an experiment that is set to see more iterations.
There were also promising ODI debuts for leg-spinner Asha Sobhana and pacer Arundhati Reddy. Asha, 33, who forced her way into India’s white-ball squads on the back of a stellar WPL, took a four-wicket haul in her first outing.
In contrast, Arundhati, 27, is no international novice, having made her T20I debut back in 2018 and played 26 matches since. Out of the squad from July 2021, the right-arm pacer came up good for the Delhi Capitals in WPL 2024 and then for South Zone in the inter-zonal multi-day tournament.
Such has been her growth, that Harmanpreet trusted her to bowl the penultimate over in the second ODI that India won by a nerve-wracking four runs. In the final encounter, Arundhati was among the best players (10-0-36-2), with both wickets sharp catches off her own bowling.
The most heart-warming aspect of the series though was India’s ground fielding. Jemimah Rodrigues was a livewire, especially in the second game where she saved more runs than the margin of victory. While the catching is still a work in progress, coach Amol Muzumdar will be pleased.
“Fielding comes first, no matter what,” Shreyanka Patil said, after Sunday’s contest. You might have scored a hundred or gotten a duck or maybe a five-for or nothing, if you’re there saving five runs, that’s still a win for your team.
“Everyone is putting in that extra bit of work after bowling or batting for an hour during practice. The results are showing and we’re all happy.”