Thiruvananthapuram. Indian women’s cricket team defeated Sri Lanka by 15 runs in the fifth and final T-20 match and won the series 5-0. With this, India achieved the feat of defeating a team by a margin of 5-0 in the T-20 series for the third time. Earlier, Team India had also defeated West Indies and Bangladesh by the same margin.

In the match played at Greenfield Stadium, Sri Lanka won the toss and decided to bowl first. India scored 175 runs for 7 wickets thanks to the brilliant half-century innings of captain Harmanpreet Kaur. In reply, the Sri Lankan team could score only 160 runs after losing 7 wickets and remained 15 runs away from the target.

On behalf of India, captain Harmanpreet Kaur played a responsible innings and scored 68 runs in 43 balls with the help of 9 fours and 1 six. Apart from them, Arundhati Reddy contributed 27 runs and Amanjot Kaur contributed 21 runs. For Sri Lanka, Chamari Atapattu, Kavisha Dilhari and Rashmika Sewandi took two wickets each.

The Sri Lankan team, which came to chase the target, had a bad start and captain Chamari Atapattu returned to the pavilion in the very second over. After this, Hasini Perera and Imesha Dulani tried to control the innings by making an important partnership of 79 runs. Imisha Dulani scored a half-century, while Hasini Perera scored 65 runs. However, as soon as he was out, Sri Lanka’s innings faltered and the team remained away from victory. For India, Sri Charani, Sneh Rana, Vaishnavi Sharma, Deepti Sharma, Arundhati Reddy and Amanjot Kaur took one wicket each, while one batsman was run out.

All five matches of the series were played at two venues. The first two matches were held in Visakhapatnam and the last three matches were held in Thiruvananthapuram. India won the first three matches by 8, 7 and 8 wickets respectively, while winning the fourth match by 30 runs and the fifth by 15 runs.

Shefali Verma was most successful in batting in the series. He scored 241 runs in five matches at an average of 80.33, which included 36 fours and 5 sixes. For Sri Lanka, Hasini Perera scored the most runs for the team by scoring 165 runs.

In bowling, India’s Deepti Sharma, Vaishnavi Sharma and Shri Charani took five wickets each. Kavisha Dilhari of Sri Lanka was also the most successful bowler of her team by taking five wickets.