Smriti Mandhana and Mithali Raj
Image- BCCI/IPL

Jio Women’s T20 Challenge: Trailblazers brutally beats Velocity by 9 wickets. Match 2 of Jio Women’s T20 Challenge: Trailblazers brutally beats Velocity by 9 wickets.

Highlights(Velocity vs Trailblazers):

Jio Women’s T20 Challenge, Match no 2, Smriti Mandhana’s Trailblazers beat Mitali’s Velocity by 9 wickets. Sophie Ecclestone, Jhulan Goswami and Rajeshwari Gayakwad sheer dominance bowled out Velocity for the lowest total in the history of Women’s T20 League. Velocity just managed to score 47 runs before they got bowled out by Trailblazers in 15.1 overs.

Earlier, Velocity got the toss to their side and they decided to bat first. The first breakthrough for Trailblazer came in 3rd over of Jhulan Goswami. Goswami picked Shafali Verma, 13 from 9 balls which include a four and a six. 

Sophie Ecclestone picked two wickets in the 4th over. Ecclestone dismissed skipper Mithali Raj and Veda Krishnamurthy on consecutive deliveries. Mitali Raj scored a single run while Veda Krishnamurthy went for a golden duck. 

Jhulan Goswami picked another wicket in the 5th over, dismissing D Wyatt. Sophie Ecclestone collected her 3rd wicket in the 6th over of the game. She dismissed Sushma Verma(1 from 8 balls).

Previous match-winner Sune Luus dismissed by Rajeshwari Gayakwad in the 9th over, Sikha Pandey got out in 10 runs. Sushree Dibyadarshini got out for a duck off Rajeshwari Gayakwad in the 9th over. To finish off, Ekta Bisht and Jahanara Alam were picked by Dipti Sharma and Ecclestone respectively.

Trailblazers Jio Women's T20 Challenge
Trailblazers || Image – BCCI/IPL

Velocity got reduced to 47 runs for 10 wickets in 15.1 overs. Sophie Ecclestone was the centre of the talks as she returned with figures 4 wickets in 3.1 overs giving away just 9 runs. While Goswami and Gayakwad got two wickets each in their bag and Dipti Sharma managed to open her account.

Trailblazers did not give a single chance to Velocity to come back and get settle down. 

In response to a low scoring total, Trailblazers reached 49 runs in just 7.5 overs. Trailblazers in the loss of Smriti Mandhana got to the total with Deandra Dottin scoring 29 runs from 28 balls while Richa Ghosh scored 13 runs off 10 balls.

The Net Run Rate of Trailblazers goes high to +3.905 with a low scoring win on Thursday, 5th November. Sophie Ecclestone was awarded Player of The Match for her 4 wickets in 3.1 overs.

Post Match Presentation:

Sophie Ecclestone | Player of the Match:

 We have a great team with a great bunch of girls, to come up here again and play for them is great. When the wicket wasn’t turning, so I tried to keep it straight and vary the pace. It’s quite nice to get a few wickets. So many youngsters around, they are teaching me the Hindi language and I’m trying to understand their culture.

Smriti Mandhana | Trailblazers captain: 

We were really excited. We were raring to play cricket after a break of seven months. It was a good game. I was happy with Mithali’s decision as we wanted to have a look at the wicket. The bowling plans were according to the batters. I just told all the bowlers to keep it back of a length and stick to the stump line. We have a good spin attack. I was following IPL, so I thought we had a good bowling attack (with all the spinners). It’s an exciting tournament, even last year it was really exciting. It’s an amazing opportunity for everyone. This is really going to help women’s cricket.

Deandra Dottin: 

I just wanted to get the runs quickly because cricket is a funny game. There could be a spot where you will have to go through on net run rate. Talking to my friends back home, watching Netflix, that’s all that I have been doing during the lockdown. We will rest up a bit before playing our next game.

Mithali Raj | Velocity captain:

 Definitely (would want to forget this game). But it is fine because when you have a fresh wicket the batters want to have a bat. That’s the reason we chose to bat. Personally, I would have liked Dani and Shafali to have a big partnership because they are the key for our batting line up and we are dependent on them to give us a start. Unfortunately in both the games we didn’t get that, Shafali played a cameo but we wanted Dani to spend some time in the middle and then there was a collapse. We are going to recover from this defeat. I think it is important we regroup and analyze, we haven’t had much preparation, two games back to back and no team gets bad in one game. The girls just need to cheer up because they would have felt bad after today’s game.

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