SL Women vs IND Women, 1st ODI at Kandy, IND-W in SL, Jul 01 2022 - Match Result

A nervy performance from the Indians, who take a 1-0 lead. Not long before the second ODI though, which will be held at the same venue on Monday, the 4th of July. Hope you enjoyed our coverage. We'll see you in a few days. Till then, on behalf of my fellow commentator, Sreshth Shah, and our scorer, Ranjith P, this is me, Sunaadh Sagar signing off.

Deepti Sharma, Player of the Match: I can bat in any position which the team demands. Today we had to focus on partnerships and that's what we did. It's not an easy wicket, turns a lot and we had to focus until the end. Pooja is a hard-hitter and she did really well in the partnership.

Chamari Athapaththu, Sri Lanka captain: Not a good start. We lost 50 runs, we're not batting our best, that's why we lost. 230 is a good score on this wicket. Shafali batted really well - we have to stick to our plans and bat out all the overs. Inoka Ranaweera is our no.1 bowler and most experienced - she did well. We'll try to bounce back in the next game

Harmanpreet Kaur, India captain: Enjoying myself, especially when you keep getting runs. Winning is important for us and I'm happy we ended up doing all we wanted to do. We want to work on partnerships and we're happy that we got small partnerships today - we want bigger partnerships in the next game. If you have someone who can bowl... I love to give Harleen and Shafali a chance - they did a great job and we would love to see them bowl in the future. Sri Lankan spinners were quite good, no easy runs and they fought well.

Time for the presentation.

Bala: "Probably Chamari wanted to protect Ranasinghe against the attack from Pooja, but did not realise that a mis-hit could have brought back SL back into the game."

Srividhya: "Seemed to be an off-day for Chamari both on her batting and captaincy front."

4:30pm A fairly competent batting performance from India then, as they chased down 172 on a tricky pitch. Smriti Mandhana and Yastika Bhatia fell early, but Shafali Verma kept things ticking over alongside Harmanpreet Kaur. The Indian captain and Harleen Deol put on a crucial 62-run partnership after the fall of the Shafali, racking up the runs at a fast clip.

Inoka Ranaweera claimed Kaur for a well-paced 44, and picked off Deol soon after for 34, thus causing consternation in what had seemed a fairly comfortable chase until that point. The Lankan spinner grabbed her fourth with Richa Ghosh's wicket with just 34 to get and four wickets left.

However, Deepti Sharma and Pooja Vastrakar held their nerve to see the innings through and giving India the victory with 12 overs to spare.

Ranasinghe back into the attack. Too little, too late?

Bala: "The going has been tough and one more wicket is what SL needed to get back into the game strongly. Holding back Ranasinghe the strike bowler does not spell any logic from the SL viewpoint."

Ranasinghe still confusingly out of the attack. Rashmi to continue

EshanHarryNz: "I thought this game would be done and dusted like SL men's game. Kudos to SL women for hanging in there. "