Indian women might have lost the second T20I to Australia in the final over, but there was just one talking point from that brilliant fixture at the Carrara Oval. When Shikha Pandey swung it in to Alyssa Healy and knocked over her off-stump, with potentially a ball of the century contender in women’s cricket, the cricketing universe took a pause to take notice.
Former Indian women’s coach WV Raman felt it was a delivery most batters would’ve struggled to face:
“That’s one delivery a lot of people are not going to forget for a long time. How much has that delivery nipped back. I have not seen something like that in a long long time. I don’t think many batters could have survived that delivery either.
That was great to see, dismissing somebody like Alyssa Healy and she is one who can put the bowlers under the pump because she knows to play only one way and that is to keep attacking all the time and get boundaries.”
Defending a moderate 119-run target, Indian bowlers had to give the side a good start. Pandey was smacked for a boundary off the very first ball by Healy, as her short delivery proved ineffective in trouble the batter. She pulled it towards deep square and found herself a boundary off the first delivery.
This is when Pandey pulled out a rabbit from her hat. Her second delivery pitched way outside off-stump, around about the good length region. But out of the blue, the ball nipped back in sharply off the track and Healy, who was preparing to play to down towards covers, got her angles wrong and was in no position to defend it.
Pandey found Healy’s stumps dismantled and that energized the entire squad. They nearly pulled off a win until Tahlia McGrath’s late heroics turned the tide towards Australia’s favour.
Having already lost the ODI series and drawn the one-off Test, this defeat meant that India will not register a series win in this tour, but can still salvage some respect if they can win the final game of the tour on Sunday.
