XtraTime Web Desk: Indian Women’s team has started their journey in the ICC Women’s World T20 in a convincing way as they beat New Zealand by 34 runs in their opening fixture at the Providence Stadium in Guyana on Friday. The star of the game for the Women in Blue was their skipper Harmanpreet Kaur who won the toss and chose to bat first. She hit a blistering ton and scored 103 runs in just 51 deliveries to take India’s score to 194 for 5 in their allotted 20 overs. It’s a record as well because Harmanpreet Kaur became the first Indian woman to score a T20 ton. She got a good support from Jemimah Rodrigues who hit 59 runs in just 45 deliveries. For the Kiwis, Lea Tahuhu took 2 wickets by giving 18 runs in 3 overs.
In reply New Zealand managed to reach 160 runs for 9 wickets in their allotted 20 overs. The individual highest scorer in Women’s T20 Suzie Bates scored 67 runs in just 50 balls before getting out to Arundhati Reddy and later Katey Martin (39 runs in 25 balls) tried her best to take her team home but it was not enough as the Indian bowlers gave their best to stop the Kiwi ladies.
For India Dayalan Hemalatha and Poonam Yadav were the stars with the ball as they took 3 wickets each to break the New Zealand batting. They got well backing from Radha Yadav and Arundhati Reddy who took 2 and 1 wicket respectively. Kaur was adjudged Woman of the Match for her brilliant century.