Srilanka won the toss & put in Nepal to Bat.
While Sri Lanka has been a regular team in this competition since its inception, Nepal has qualified for the tournament for the 1st time. And their inexperience showed in their game.
Nepal Women started cautiously but lost their 1st wicket in the 4th over on the score of just 12. In the 9th over Inoka Ranaweera was on a hattrick when she picked Kajal Shreshtha & Nary Thapa both on ducks. The Hattrick was prevented, but the innings just couldn’t build.
On one hand the Nepali opening wicketkeeper-batter J. Pandey was holding her end up & contributed with a slow but steady, 16 runs off 39 balls, before she got runout on 21 in the 12th over.
The Nepali innings had 8 ducks in all & winded up on a score of 23 runs in the 17th over.
Sugandika Kumari & Inoka Ranaweera picked up 3 wickets each.
In return the Srilankan did not start very well either losing Chamari Atapattu in the very 1st over to the Nepal women captain Rubina Belbashi. But the next batter, the Sri Lankan captain Hasini Perera was in no mood to take it easy, and mounted an attack on Nepal Women with a six and a four.
SriLanka lost the other opener Yasoda Mendis in the 4th over but by then the score was already on 21, Thanks to Hasini’s 17 off 14 balls. The match was over in just 4.3 overs.
Surely Nepal was not expected to win but they are getting a lot of exposure & experience playing with big teams like Sri Lanka & earlier Pakistan. Their next match is against Bangladesh.
Inoka was declared Player of the Match for her 3 wickets which initially broke the back of the Nepal Batting.
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