Rampant India seal semis spot

WOMEN’S WORLD T20 Shafali Verma shines with the bat before bowlers defend 133 against New Zealand in Melbourne

MELBOURNE: India entered the semi-finals of the women’s T20 Wor l d C u p a f t e r S h a f a l i Verma’s 34-ball 46 followed by a superlative performance from the bowlers helped the team notch up a narrow four-run win over New Zeal and here on Thursday.

Invited to bat, India posted a below-par 133/8 in the group A match with Shafali top-scoring and Taniya Bhatia chipping in with a 25-ball 23.

India, however, produced a disciplined performance with the ball to restrict New Zealand to 129/6 and register their third successive win in the tournament and seal a last-four spot.

With this win, India topped Group A, having beaten Australia and Bangladesh in their last two outings.

“It is a great feeling when your team is performing like that,” India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said after the match. “We did the same mistakes, we got a good start in the first 10 overs and we didn’t carry the momentum. We did bowl well in patches but sometimes, we were not up to the mark and have to f ocus on t hose areas, ” s he added.

Defending a below-par total, India introduced spin straight away but Deepti Sharma bled 12 runs with opener Rachel Priest (12) hitting her for two boundaries. But experienced pacer Shikha Pandey removed Priest in the next over when she had her caught at mid wicket.

With Shikha and left-arm spinner Rajeshwari Gayakwad bowling in tandem, New Zealand played with caution to reach 28/1. Back into the attack, Deepti then cleaned up Bates with a beauty of a delivery as New Zealand slipped to 30/2.

Poonam Yadav and Radha Yadav then mounted the pressure on the Kiwis and soon the Black Caps were 34/3 when the f ormer di s missed s ki pper Sophie Devine ( 14). Maddy Green (24) and Katey Martin (25) t hen t r i ed t o r esurrect t he innings with a 36-ball 43-run stand.

However, Gayakwad returned to remove Green, who danced down the pitch only to end up with an outside edge as Bhatia did the rest.

Radha then dismissed Martin to leave New Zealand at 90/5 in 16.3 overs.

Needing 44 off 22 balls, Kerr (34) blasted four boundaries to accumulate 18 runs in the penul

timate over bowled by Poonam to bring the equation down to 16 off six balls.

In the final over, Heyley Jensen (11) and Kerr cracked a four each but Shikha held her nerves in the end to ensure India’s win.

Earlier, 16-year-old Shafali

provided the fireworks as India scored 49/1 in the powerplay overs. But they lost six wickets for 43 runs to squander the good start.

Smriti Mandhana (11), who returned to the XI after missing the last match due to illness,