The Austria Women’s tour of Italy commenced on the 9th August 2021 and a total of 4 matches have been played between the two teams until now at the Roma Cricket Club Pitch in Spinaceto.
1st T20I – Italy Won by 8 Wickets
The first match saw the maiden T20I of the Italian women who despite having the initial nervousness, managed to defeat the Austrian team with a good score of 108 runs at the loss of two wickets. Italian skipper Kumudu Peddrick’s awesome batting, as well as bowling performance, propelled her team to victory. The Austria team’s significant batters Busra Uca, Andrea-Mae Zepeda, and skipper Gandhali Bapat could not work their magic probably because of the new conditions to which they had not completely adapted.
2nd T20I – Austria won by 7 wickets
However, in the second match, the Austrian women showed the Italians who is the boss by eliminating Kumudu, Dilaisha as well as Teshani without letting them score even a single run. Sharon, Dishani and Gayathri somehow managed to collect some runs for the team but it was not at all sufficient to pressurize Austria. Austrian star bowlers Valentina and Mahadewa executed such amazing deliveries that the Italy Women could not even make a score of 100 runs. Hence, Austria easily chased the 99-run target and won the match.
3rd T20I – Austria won by 7 Runs
In the third match, the Austrian Women batted in the first inning while Italy took the bowling end. Andrea Zepeda was the highest scorer of the team by contributing a commendable 43 runs off 44 balls. However, the other batters could not support her enough and kept getting eliminated even before reaching a score of 20 runs. Due to Andrea’s good score, the Austrian team managed to reach a score of 120 runs at the loss of 5 wickets. Italian bowler Sharon Withanage starred in this match by taking three wickets for her team and preventing the Austrian women from going above 120 runs. Kumudu and Dishani also picked a wicket each. The Italians started the second inning well. Teshani and Kumudu built up a good partnership and sustained for a considerable amount of time. Despite the openers giving their best performance, the players who came in following their elimination could not perform at all and Italy ended up losing a match which was in the palm of their hands by scoring 113 runs at a loss of 3 wickets.
4th T20I – Austria won by 6 Wickets
The fourth match was not good for the batting line-ups of both teams. The match was started by Italy. Once again in this match, the entire batting line-up showed a very poor performance. None of the batters reached a score of 10 runs and two of them were eliminated at zero. Only because of 40 extras did Italy’s score reach 73 runs. Austrian bowler Valentina Avdylaj once again proved to be the best bowler in the team by bagging 4 wickets in this match. Similarly, Komati Reddy picked 2 wickets. The rest of the Austrian bowlers each picked a wicket. The Austrian bowlers displayed a laudable performance and the Italian batters were no match for their bowling. Wickets kept falling in quick succession and the first inning ended in the 17th over itself. In the second inning, neither the openers nor the middle order could last long. Jo-Antoinette Stiglitz was the highest scorer in the team with a total of 14 runs off 14 balls. Now and then, the Austrian batters somehow chipped in runs and with 29 extras they managed to win the match with a total of 74 runs at a loss of 4 wickets. Italy’s Sharon Withanage once again proved to be the best bowler in her team while Captain Kumudu and Dilaisha picked a wicket each.
5th T20I – Italy Won by 1 Run
In the last match of the series, the Italian women showed that they would not go down easily. Winning the toss and choosing to bat first, the match was opened by Sharon Withanage and skipper Kumudu Peddrick. Unfortunately, the openers could not get into a partnership as Sharon was eliminated very soon. However, Captain Peddrick stayed determined to last for a long time. She was then provided good support by Teshani Araliya. These two women contributed the most runs to the total team score while the others could not even score 10 runs. Due to poor performance by the Italian line-up the Austrians got a chasable target of 100 runs. The Austrian bowlers did a fabulous job though they were pumped a bit by Peddrick and Araliya. Unfortunately, Austria’s batswomen as well could not perform at all. Only Captain Gandhali Bapat reached a score of 37 runs. However, after her elimination, the Austrian batting performance crumbled down. Italian bowlers Dishani and Sharon took two wickets each and with support from other bowlers did not let the Austrians chase the easy target that their Italian batters had set. Italy snatched the match from the Austrians and won by 1 run.
With the end of this match the series came to an end and the Austrian Women were the overall winners with a 3-2 lead.
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