Report

Rakhi Mehra shapes North win

North Zone managed to pull off a five-wicket win against East Zone in the CricInfo Rani Jhansi Trophy Women's cricket tournament at the IIT Chemplast ground in Chennai on Tuesday

Natarajan Sriram
04-Apr-2000
North Zone managed to pull off a five-wicket win against East Zone in the CricInfo Rani Jhansi Trophy Women's cricket tournament at the IIT Chemplast ground in Chennai on Tuesday.
At the start of the match, both North and East were looking for their elusive first win in the tournament. After dismissing East for 142, North started disastrously by losing both openers Jaya Sharma (0), Gulshan (2). But the East bowlers could not maintain the pressure and when Rakhi Mehra (67) and Rajni Bhalla (17) came together, one saw as many as three bowling changes in five overs. They both put on a 57-run partnership in 13.4 overs for the third wicket before Rajni Bhalla was caught at short cover by Saswathi off Seema Singh when she tried to clear the fielder.
Incidentally, East's bowling was in sharp contrast to that of North Zone. There were far too many extras conceded in the early overs even as they were able to pick up the two early wickes. This, coupled with some wayward bowling later on saw Rakhi Mehra pick some easy runs and lay the platform for a North Zone win.
In the company of Gurdeep Kaur (27), Rakhi took the match well and truly out of East Zone's hands with a 68-run fourth wicket stand in 24 overs. But Kavitha came back in the 37th over to pick up Gurdeep and Vandna off successive deliveries. But that was too precious and too little for the occasion and North completed the formalities thanks to Rakhi Mehra and Reema Malhotra.
Rakhi had a shaky start and was helped on the way by some shoddy fielding during her stay at the crease. Though her first scoring stroke was a boundary, she was not able to find the timing and the conviction. Even as she played some good shots and hit some boundaries, she had as many as three lives.
Earlier, put in to bat East made a patchy start with openers Neetu Singh (26 runs off 40 balls) and Saswathi Mukerjee (5 runs off 20 balls) putting on 20 runs in 5.4 overs. Saswathi fell to an innocuous shot when she mistimed a drive to give a simple catch to Jaya Sharma at the covers. Then Chandrabarti Paul (37 runs in 75 balls) joined Neetu and took the score to 61 with a fruitful 41 run stand in 9.2 overs before Neetu was adjudged leg before to Anjuman Bassi. Later Asha, who bowled ten overs on the trot, managed to find the edge of Geetha Samantrai's bat after scoring five runs in 21 balls.
The middle overs saw the North Zone bowlers restricting the East scoring rate and picking up wickets at regular intervals. Kavita and Chandrabarti put together a 27-run fourth wicket stand in 11.5 overs. But the run out of Kavitha (10) triggered a little collapse as East lost both Chandrabarti and Pratima cheaply for the addition of only seven runs to the total.
In the end Anjuman Bassi picked up the wickets of Jhulan and Babusha in the space of eight balls. The East innings folded up in the third ball of the 46th over with the total at 142. Off-spinner Anjuman Bassi was the pick of the North bowlers with figures of 3 for 27 in her quota of ten overs.