Australia Women and Sri Lanka women met for their first match of the ODI series at Brisbane. An all-round performance helped Australia seize a dominant win over Sri Lanka in what was the 16th consecutive ODI victory for the Southern Stars.
The match started with Healy scoring a boundary of Prabodhani in the 1st over itself. It was in the 4th over that she fell cheaply to Kulasuriya who took a return catch of her own bowling.
It was Lanning and Haynes who stitched a brilliant partnership and took the game along. Scoring boundaries every now and then, the Sri Lanka bowlers never seemed to trouble them. The match saw a Meg Lanning masterclass who scored 73 runs before falling to Ranasinghe in the 25th over. Rachel Haynes also contributed a well made 56 before getting out in the 26th over.
The game was then taken forward by Mooney and Perry who seemed to enjoy their outing in the middle before a confusion in the middle had Perry stranded out of the crease resulting in a runout. Mooney went on to anchor the innings and scored a brilliant 66 before getting stumped in the 45th over by Ranaweera.
A good contribution by Carey and Wareham in the lower order saw Australia pose a score of 281 for the Lankans to chase.
The Sri Lanka Women, on the other hand, put up a dismal performance. Ellyse Perry took the first wicket of the innings in the first over itself. Madavi took the game forward by hitting boundaries throughout her small stay in the middle before Healy caught her out of Vlaeminck’s bowling. Karunaratne and Surangika could not score more than 20 runs while Siriwardene was the highest run-scorer of the Sri Lanka side having scored 30 runs. In the end, Australia Women had a comfortable victory over Sri Lanka, winning the match by 157 runs.
Australia showed a good performance in all 3 departments with Vlaeminck, Jonassen and Gardner each taking couple of wickets. Perry and Wareham too contributed by taking one wicket each.
Both teams will face each other on 7th October, Monday for the 2nd game of the ODI series.
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