Twitter Reactions: Jemimah Rodrigues and Renuka Thakur's brilliance take India into CWG 2022 semis
Renuka Thakur took a brilliant four-wicket haul to break Barbados' back in the chase.
India Women have qualified for the semifinals of the Women’s Cricket Competition of the Commonwealth Games 2022 (CWG) with a comprehensive 100-run win in their final group game against Barbados at Edgbaston, Birmingham on Wednesday, August 3. More importantly, this victory has brought the Indian eves a step closer to the medal race.
Even though the Women in Blue lost their top order early, Jemimah Rodrigues played a crucial knock that helped them post a fighting total on the board and star pacer Renuka Singh Thakur did the rest in the second innings with the ball in hand as she successfully went on to register her second four-wicket haul in the competition.
Renuka Singh Thakur powers India Women into the semifinals
Barbados skipper Hayley Matthews won an important toss and elected to bowl first. It was indeed a good move as they dismissed the in-form Smriti Mandhana for just five before Shafali Verma and Jemimah Rodrigues staged a 71-run stand for the second wicket. Shafali looked well-set for a big knock before a mix-up with Jemimah ended her stay at the crease for a 26-ball 43.
India sunk into further trouble after captain Harmanpreet Kaur was dismissed for a golden duck. Even wicketkeeper-batter Taniya Bhatiya failed to offer any resistance as well. Nonetheless, Jemimah Rodrigues scored an important unbeaten 56 runs from 46 balls and supporting innings of a 28-ball 34 helped Indian eves in posting 162/4 from their 20 overs.
In reply, Barbados were never really there in the run chase as they failed to read Renuka Singh Thakur’s line and length that asked tough questions in the powerplay overs. A couple of dismissals in her spell included two batters leaving a ball wrongly assuming that it would go over the stumps.
Thakur finished her spell with figures of 4/10 from her four overs at an economy of 2.5. Thus, she also became the leading wicket-taker of the ongoing CWG 2022 with nine scalps to her name. Having lost their top-order and being reduced to 19/4 inside the powerplay, Barbados could never really recover and resorted to a defensive strategy in the rest of their innings even though they ended up losing four more wickets. Eventually, Barbados Women were restricted to 62/8 from their 20 overs and bowed out of the competition.
Here’s how Twitter reacted to India’s clinical performance in a must-win encounter:
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