India women knocked out after loss to Australia

MUMBAI: An early hat-trick by Megan Schutt gave Australia a 36-run win over India at the Brabourne Stadium on Monday, knocking the hosts out of the T20I tri-series which also includes England. Set a challenging target of 187, India promoted youngster Jemimah Rodrigues to open the innings with the in-form Smriti Mandhana, but the strategy did not succeed.
Mandhana, who scored consecutive half-centuries failed to read Schutt’s slower delivery on the fifth ball of the second over.The ball ricocheted off her pad and hit the stumps. Before India could recover from this jolt, Schutt struck again, bowling out the vastly experienced Mithali Raj off the next ball. After changing ends, Schutt got the wicket of Deepti Sharma, who mistimed her shot and found the fielder at long on to reduce the hosts to 26/3.
It was then time for the Rodrigues show. After being dropped on 26, the 17-year-old put up a wonderful 54-run partnership with Kaur, scoring most of the runs. The Mumbai girl, backed by the home support, scored her first international half-century in 39 balls.
Kaur, meanwhile, struggled to rotate the strike and attempted the big shots, which slowed India down considerably. With a huge asking rate, it was time for Rodrigues to go all out. She paid the price for it though, chipping to long-off for an easy catch to Schutt off the bowling of Delissa Kimmence.
Anuja Patil (38* off 26 balls) and Pooja Vastrakar (19* off 14 balls) did play late cameos, but it was too little to late, and India could just manage 150/5 in their 20 overs.
In the lead up to the match, Kaur had spoken about how her bowlers needed to step up. And they did put up a better performance, managing to restrict the big-hitting Australians to 186/5 on a batting paradise.
BRIEF SCORES: Australia Women 186/5 (Beth Mooney 71, Elyse Villani 61; Pooja Vastrakar 2-28) beat Indian Women 150/5 (Jemimah Rodrigues 50, Anuja Patil 38*; Megan Schutt 3-31) by 36 runs.