Rahul Tiwari
khelja|21-10-2024
New Zealand has become the new world champion of women's T20 cricket. New Zealand, captained by Sophie Devine, has won the ICC Women's T20 World Cup title for the first time. In the final played in Dubai on Sunday 20 October, New Zealand defeated South Africa by 32 runs and captured the championship. With this his wait of 15 years also ended. Also, New Zealand became the first team to win the World Cup in T20 or ODI. Before this, no New Zealand team had won any World Cup in senior men's or women's cricket. For the second consecutive year, South Africa got heartbroken in the World Cup final.
Sunday, October 20, started on a high note for New Zealand cricket and ended on an even better note. For the first time, the New Zealand men's team won a Test match in India after a long wait of almost 36 years. Tom Latham's team defeated India by 8 wickets in the Bengaluru Test. After this, the Kiwi Women's team in Dubai ended their country's long-running wait for the World Cup title. At the same time, South African cricket had to face a heart-breaking defeat in the final for the second time within 4 months. Earlier in June, South Africa had lost to Team India in the final of the Men's T20 World Cup.
The New Zealand team lost the toss but despite this, batting first, it scored a strong score of 158 runs. After the first wicket fell in the second over itself, Suzie Bates and Amelia Karr took over the innings. Here Bates and captain Sophie Devine quickly returned to the pavilion but Brook Halliday (38), who came in their place, rained boundaries. There was an excellent partnership of 57 runs between Amelia (43) and Halliday. After this, Amelia and Maddy Green scored some boundaries in the last overs and took the team to this score at the loss of 5 wickets, which was very strong for the final.
The South African team, which won the semi-finals by batting aggressively while chasing against defending champion Australia, adopted the same stance this time too. Especially captain Laura Woolworth (33) thrashed the Kiwi bowlers. The team did not lose any wicket in the powerplay but after that there was a fall of wickets. The first wicket fell in the seventh over and then in the 10th over, Amelia Carr (3/24) took the wickets of Woolworth and Anneka Bosch. Then Marijn Kapp and Nadine Declercq also kept walking on consecutive balls and 5 wickets had fallen in just 13 overs.
From here, all eyes were on Sune Lees and Chloe Tryon and both of them raised the hopes of the team by making a small partnership but it was not enough. Like Amelia, Brook Halliday also did wonders in batting after bowling and broke the partnership by dismissing Lees. From here, South Africa's defeat was certain and ultimately the team could score only 126 runs after losing 9 wickets in 20 overs. In this way, for the second consecutive year, South Africa had to face defeat in the T20 World Cup final. Last year Australia had defeated them in the final.