Jammu, Dec 30: After giving a heavy thrashing to Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in their first two outings of the tournament, Jammu and Kashmir suffered an eight-wicket defeat against strong Karnataka on Friday in the Women’s U-15 One Day Tournament at Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium-B Rajkot. However, J&K eves saw a lot of positives from this loss.
Earlier, put into bat, J&K began on a disastrous note losing 4 wickets for just 9 runs in 9.3 overs including the wickets of prolific run scorers -Manya Banotra and Shambhavi Rajput.
However, the duo of Sania Slathia and Bhagya Lakshmi Jamwal salvaged the sinking ship and took the score to 55 in 21 overs before Bhagya Lakshmi was dismissed on her individual score of 21 runs off 42 balls, studded with 3 boundaries. Finally, J&K scored 87/9 in the stipulated 35 overs. Sania Slathia scored 22 runs off 44 balls with 2 fours.
For Karnataka, Vandita K Rao was the wrecker-in-chief who took 5 wickets by conceding 16 runs in her 7 overs, while Veda Varshini and Inchara CU claimed one wicket each.
In reply, Karnataka chased the target easily in 17.5 overs by losing 2 wickets, thus winning the match by 8 wickets. Inchara CU was the top scorer with 34 runs off 45 balls, studded with 6 boundaries, while H Bhavika Reddy and Sherya S Chavan contributed 20 and 19 runs to the total respectively.
For J&K, left-arm seam bowler Sheetal Devi and Manya Banotra claimed one wicket each.
It is pertinent to mention here that recovering from 9/4 to make it 87/9 in 35 overs against a strong side is unquestionably a new thing in J&K women’s cricket, which brings positivity in all of us, because as per the precedence, in such situations (9/4), J&K earlier would have managed to score just 25-30 runs in their innings. Undoubtedly, J&K women’s cricket is on an upswing and for improving the standard of women’s cricket in J&K, apart from JKCA Administration, the mentors, the coaches, the selectors and the entire support staff deserves appreciation as they left no stone unturned in making them mentally tough apart from honing their skills.
