Mandhana, Kaur Get Centuries Against WI Women

For Indian cricket fans waking up on Saturday morning, you would be happy and in for a treat as you would’ve seen India Women doing really well against West Indies Women in the ongoing 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. It’s India’s third game of the tournament and today’s brilliant performance comes 48 hours after they lost badly to New Zealand Women.

Today, India batted first and put up a mammoth 300+ score in their quote of 50 overs, and this was done thanks to centuries from two of their shining lights in women’s cricket. The proceedings began with Smriti Mandhana who brought up her fifth ODI century and in the rear end of the innings, Harmanpreet Kaur also got to the party, scoring her fourth career Women’s ODI century.

Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur score centuries

India Women ended with 317/8 in their 50 overs and the foundation was set initially by Mandhana who ended with 123(119) in what was her second highest score in ODI cricket. She would’ve been super thrilled with this knock because it came after she failed with the bat in the important chase against New Zealand Women in their last game in this 2022 Women’s WC campaign.

On the other hand, Harmanpreet continued her good form in this World Cup with an aggressive century. She was hitting the big shots and got 10 fours and 2 sixes in her knock of 109(107), being dismissed as she tried to increase the pace at the end of the innings. It’s a brilliant confident boost for Kaur who came into this tournament very short on runs.

Kaur scored a fifty in the fifth ODI against New Zealand Women, which was the last game India W played before this World Cup. She brought that form into the tournament and even scored a fifty in the last game, where she perished in a losing cause. And with both of them scoring centuries in this game, it’s a good sign for the team for the rest of this tournament as well.

And today’s knocks from these two women came against a Windies team that had a clean slate in the tournament before today. They beat two of the tournament favourites in England and New Zealand Women. Their bowling attack was taken apart today and the only one who did relatively well was Anisa Mohammed who ended with 2/59 in her ten overs.

Goddess through the off side 👌🏼 Terrific innings under pressure, well played @mandhana_smriti 👏🏼 #INDvWI #CWC22 pic.twitter.com/1uQRsp1wzL
— Wasim Jaffer (@WasimJaffer14) March 12, 2022

When spoken to in the innings break, Mandhana mentioned that this had to be one of her best ODI knocks till date because she couldn’t score as freely as she needed to. India lost three wickets early on and she had to hit the breaks, consolidate and rebuild before getting the scoring rate up once again. As for Harmanpreet, she seems to be making a habit of putting in big performances when India plays at major ICC events, scoring her third world cup century and that doesn’t even include a T20 world cup century she got in 2018.

Harmanpreet Kaur in World Cups:
2013, ODI: Scored a century
2017, ODI: Scored THE century
2018, T20: Scored a century
2022, ODI: Scored a centuryhttps://t.co/0WCED7PPnf pic.twitter.com/ev9hkrSKZG
— Vinayakk (@vinayakkm) March 12, 2022