Oz ride Schutt’s hat-trick, end India women’s campaign in T20 tri-series

MUMBAI: A day after the Australian men’s team, in doldrums following a ball-tampering scandal, suffered a 322-run defeat against the Proteas in the third Test at Cape Town, the Australian women gave their fans something to cheer about as they pummeled India by 36 runs to make it to the final of women’s T20 tri-series at the Brabourne Stadium here on Monday.

Australia will face England in the title clash on Saturday. India, on the other hand, crashed out of the tournament. Medium pacer Megan Schutt was the star performer for Australia, claiming a hat-trick. Schutt castled Smriti Mandhana and Mithali Raj off the last two balls of the first over before returning to dismiss Deepti Sharma off the first ball of her second to achieve the feat. Brief scores: Australia 186/5 in 20 overs (B Mooney 71, E Villani 61, P Vastrakar 2/28) beat India 150/5 in 20 overs (J Rodrigues 50, A Patil 38*, M Schutt 3/31) by 36 runs.

RAUT DROPPED

NEW DELHI : Opener Punam Raut was dropped from the 15-member squad for the four-match ODI series against England. The matches will be played on April 3, 6, 9 and 12 in Nagpur.

Squad: Mithali Raj (captain), Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Dayalan Hemalatha, Veda Krishnamurthy, Devika Vaidya, Jhulan Goswami, Shikha Pandey, Pooja Vastrakar, Ekta Bisht, Poonam Yadav, Sushma Verma and Rajeshwari Gayakwad.