Chennai: In the only Test match played at M Chidambaram Stadium, the Indian women’s cricket team crushed the South African women’s team by 10 wickets. In this match, India’s right-arm off-spinner Sneh Rana bowled brilliantly and took 10 wickets. Sneh Rana has received the Player of the Match award. In this match led by Harmanpreet Kaur, the Indian team declared its first innings at 603 for 6.
During this, opener Shefali Verma played a record-breaking innings of 205 runs. Right-handed aggressive batsman Shefali played this innings in just 197 balls. Another experienced Indian opener Smriti Mandhana also scored 149 runs off 161 balls during this period. In response to India’s huge score, South Africa were all out for just 266 runs.
For India, Sneh Rana bowled brilliantly on the Chennai pitch and took 8 wickets for 77 runs. After this, the Indian team forced South Africa to follow on and bundled them out for 373 runs. Captain Laura Wolvaardt played an innings of 122 runs for South Africa. Apart from her, Sune Luus also scored 109 runs.indw-vs-saw-sneh-rana
However, South Africa’s lower order could not do anything special. India’s Sneh Rana also dismissed two South African batsmen in this innings. After the South African innings was out, India got a target of just 37 runs to win. The Indian team won the match by achieving this target without any loss.
Sneh Rana took a total of 10 wickets for 188 runs in this match. Sneh Rana has become only the second Indian player to take 10 or more wickets in a match. Earlier, former Team India captain Jhulan Goswami took 10 wickets for 78 runs against England in the Taunton Test in 2006. Earlier, Neetu David took 8 wickets for 53 runs in England’s second innings in Jamshedpur in 1995, while Ashley Gardner took 8 wickets for 66 runs in the fourth innings of the Ashes Test last year.
This is the third consecutive Test win for the Indian women’s team. The Indian team had earlier defeated England and Australia in December 2023. Apart from India, only the Australian team has a record of making a hat-trick of winning consecutive Tests in women’s cricket. India has won all these three matches under the captaincy of Harmanpreet Kaur. She is the first female captain to do so. Harmanpreet has now equaled Mithali Raj in terms of India’s most successful Test captain. Mithali Raj also won three Tests as captain.
With this win, the Indian team’s undefeated streak continues in the current multi-format series against South Africa. The South African women’s team is currently on an Indian tour, where they have also lost 0-3 in the three-match ODI series. Now a three-match T20 series will start between the two teams. All three matches of the series will be played at the M Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
