Srinagar, Jan 29: Riding on AA Patil’s magnificent 91 runs Jharkhand defeated Jammu and Kashmir by a big margin of 88 runs as young leg-spinner Ananaya Sharma’s good bowling display goes in vain in the ongoing Senior Women’s One Day Trophy at SLIMS Cricket Stadium, Puducherry today.
Earlier, put into bat, Jharkhand batters after early hiccups consolidated the innings and scored a good total of 212 runs in the stipulated 50 overs, losing 9 wickets in the process. AA Patil played a magnificent innings of power-packed 91 runs off 76 balls, studded with 13 fours and one six, while skipper Niharika scored valuable 36 runs off 54 balls with 5 boundaries. Durga Murmu (20), Devyani (19) and Mamta Paswan (17) were the other contributors. At one point of time, Jharkhand were struggling at 16/4 in 13.2 overs, when Durga Murmu and AA Patil salvaged the sinking ship and took the score to 65 runs in 25.5 overs before Murmu’s dismissal. Then a big partnership of 93 runs between brilliant Patil and skipper Niharika with an average of around 7 runs per over, and a good work by the tailenders helped Jharkhand to set a target of 213 runs for J&K.
For J&K, leg-spinner Ananaya Sharma, who though was introduced late, was the most successful bowler, taking 3/32 in her 5 overs, while left-arm seamer Sarla Devi bagged 2/35 in 10 overs and skipper and right-arm off-spinner Sandhya Sayal picked 2/50 in her 10 overs. However, right-arm medium pacer Rubia Syed was the most economical among the lot, claiming one wicket by giving away just 16 runs in her 10 overs.
In reply, J&K managed to score 124 runs in 50 overs by losing 8 wickets, thus lost the match by a big margin of 88 runs. Anju Tomar top scored with 32 runs, while Nadia Chowdhary, Sarla Devi and Sandhya Sayal contributed 23, 22 and 13 runs to the total respectively.
For Jharkhand, Mamta Paswan was the pick of the bowlers, who took 3 wickets by conceding 12 runs in her 10 overs, while Devyani, Durga Murmu, AA Patil and Niharika claimed one wicket each.
This was last match of the league phase in this tournament. J&K has won three and lost four out of the seven matches. J&K won against minnows Mizoram and Sikkim, besides formidable Odisha, while it hasost against Railways, Saurashtra, Kerala and Jharkhand.
Meanwhile, why Bismah Hassan’s replacement-Iqra Rasool was made to bowl just 2 overs in the entire tournament, why Urvashi was not given a chance in the playing XI in the whole tournament, why Ananaya Sharma was under-bowled in each match, why a genuine batter picked in the Playing XI was made to bat at number-9 and why Rubia Syed was sent mostly late in the batting order remain a few questions to be answered.