IND Women vs SL Women, 1st T20I at Dambulla, IND-W in SL, Jun 23 2022 - Ball by Ball Commentary

It was a clinical performance from the Indians, who have taken a 1-0 lead. Not long before the second T20I though, which will be held at the same venue on Saturday. Hope you enjoyed our coverage. We'll see you in a couple of days time. Till then, on behalf of S Sudarshanan and Ranjith P, this is me Ashish Pant signing off.

Jemimah Rodrigues is the Player of the Match : [On enjoying playing Sri Lanka] I don't know, it is more about the pitches. Where I stay in Mumbai, the pitches are slower and similar to Sri Lanka, so I am very used to to playing because from childhood I am playing in these conditions. I just applied my game, kept it simple and tried to play the same game. I love this country, it is a very beautiful country. It is a privilege for us to come here, even in all these times and get the facilities that we are getting and the love we are getting from the Sri Lanka board, it is a blessing to come here and play some cricket.

Harmanpreet Kaur: [On the match] Definitely, it is a part of the game, sometimes you plan something and that does not work the way you want it. But credit to players who believed in themselves to pull this game, especially Jemi [Jemimah Rodrigues], the way she batted, because we needed her at that time. And later on the bowlers did the job for us. [On areas to improve] As a unit, we definitely want to to utilise the first six overs, and we will look for that. Apart from that, everything was covered well. We were losing continuous wickets and next time, we will try to create more partnerships. Everything is great, and we are really enjoying our time here. Even with so much happening in the country, the people are still are very helpful. Today also they came to watch us and that is what you want. We are lucky that we can entertain them while playing and we are happy that we got the opportunity to play here.

Sri Lankan captain, Chamari Athapaththu first up: [Assessment of the game] We dropped a couple of catches, especially Harmanpreet's which were crucial. And the last over which Kavisha [Dilhari] bowled, that went for 20 runs, was also a reason. In the power play we were not batting our best, we played a lot of dot balls and did not score many boundaries. I think that is the reason we lost the match. [On chasing] The total was chaseable, but we had to stick with a plan and have to play positive cricket, otherwise we will not be able to chase that kind of a score.

Time for presentation.

5:08pm A disciplined bowling effort helps India win the first T20I by 34 runs and start the series on a high. The bowlers were on top of things right from the first over. Deepti struck first by getting rid of Vishmi Gunaratne for 1. Radha Yadav then got into the act striking twice in an over to break Sri Lanka's back. The innings limped thereon with none of the batters managing to clear the field. Sri Lanka only struck 12 fours in their entire innings, six of which were hit by Kavisha Dilhari, who finished on 47* off 49 balls. For India, Deepti was economical while Radha picked up two wickets. Harmanpreet wrung the changes well, using as many as seven bowlers.

Renuka, who bowled the first over, will also bowl the last

Pooja Vastrakar to bowl