Ashleigh Gardner’s blistering knock with Ellyse Perry’s Century sends West Indies to series defeat

1) Ellyse Perry: Ellyse Perry, Undoubtedly, the best all-rounder in the woman’s cricket at the moment. She scored a fantastic ton against Windies on Sunday. She played an unbeaten knock of 112 runs which included 9 fours. With the ball too she got an early breakthrough by removing the wicket of Stay Ann King.

Winning the toss, Stars opted to bat. As Meg Lanning was not available for the game, her deputy Rachael Haynes took the leadership role. Opening the inning Stars lost early wicket of stand-in skipper Haynes for 13. On the other side, Alyssa Healy played her natural aggressive game as she scored 58 runs in just 43 including 10 fours and 1 six. Once she got out at 58, innings slowed down a bit, Perry and Mooney took time as they had a good partnership between them. Mooney got retired hurt after scoring a half-century. Later it was all Perry show, as the pitch got to slow up, she did not play any rash shots, it was all textbook cricket from her and in the end, she scored an unbeaten century of 112 runs in just 118 balls, it is her highest score in ODI. She was well supported by hard-hitting allrounder Ashleigh Gardener, who played a dynamic inning of 57 runs in just 25 balls, she was hitting the ball with ease, Her innings included 6 fours and 3 huge sixes. Southern Stars ended up the innings at 308 for 2 in 50 overs.

Chasing the target, Windies were never in the game. They lost the early wicket of King by centurion Perry. Later on, the wickets continued to fall in tandem. It was completely a contrast batting show from Windies woman. Stafanie Taylor and her team need to come with something really special else defeating a team like Southern Stars looks impossible. All the bowlers from Stars chipped in with a wicket each except Wareham who picked up 2 wickets. In the end, Windies ended up scoring just 157 for 8 in 50 overs, short by 151 runs.

With this win, Southern Stars are 2-0 up in the series, it looks like it will be a clean sweep, hope Windies Woman will come back stronger before the series becomes dead rubber.