The sun takes much longer than usual to retreat these summer days, here. So even at seven in the evening, it is bright and extremely warm.
Normally, one might not venture out in these conditions. But over the last few days, a lot of people made their way to the Sawai Mansingh Stadium to watch India’s finest women cricketers playing along with some of the biggest stars from across the globe.
If the way fans of this beautiful city — which boasts architecture as stunning as most other places in India — have responded to three league matches of the Women’s T20 Challenge is anything to go by, there could be an excellent crowd for the final on Saturday.
And it promises to be a fascinating game, as well. Both Supernovas and Velocity have played some good cricket here over the last few days.
But, the game they played on Thursday night wasn’t particularly memorable for the way it finished. Needing to achieve a net run-rate better than that of the third team in the competition, Trailblazers, Velocity played it safe.
Mithali Raj’s girls decided not to go for the target set by Supernovas, after they lost the wicket of their hard-hitting one-drop from England, Danielle Wyatt.
Better cricket
No doubt it is Supernovas that has played better cricket. Harmanpreet Kaur’s girls had fought hard in their opening match, too, before going gone down by just two runs to Smriti Mandhana’s Trailblazers.
Harmanpreet was largely responsible for taking her side that close, with her ferocious hitting in the final over.
Supernovas’ batting has a lot of firepower in fact, with the presence of players like Jemimah Rodrigues, Sophie Devine and Chamari Atapattu.
For its big shots, Velocity would be looking to batters like Wyatt, Hayley Matthews, Amelia Kerr and the 15-year-old Shafali Varma, who alone showed what a competition like this could do to Indian women’s cricket.
The teams (from):
Supernovas: Harmanpreet Kaur (captain), Anuja Patil, Chamari Atapattu, Jemimah Rodrigues, Sophie Devine, Natalie Sciver, Taniya Bhatia (wicketkeeper), Lea Tahuhu, Mansi Joshi, Poonam Yadav, Priya Punia, Arundhati Reddy and Radha Yadav.
Velocity: Mithali Raj (captain), Shafali Verma, Hayley Matthews, Amelia Kerr, Danielle Wyatt, Veda Krishnamurthy, Sushma Verma (wicketkeeper), Devika Vaidya, Ekta Bisht, Jahanara Alam, Komal Zhanzad, Shikha Pandey and Sushree Pradhan.
Live on Star Sports and Hotstar, from 7.30 p.m .
