🏏India Women vs Sri Lanka Women, 2nd T20I SLW tour of India 2025🏏 - Page 2

For all the fame that one innings brought, people often forget how consistent Harmanpreet has been. She isn’t just the face of one miracle match; she’s the spine of Indian women’s cricket.

She has played seven semifinal or final matches in her career. Her average in those games? A ridiculous 103.25. Three of her seven ODI hundreds have come in World Cups. No other woman cricketer has scored more World Cup runs than her with a better average & a better strike rate.

And she’s done all this while mostly batting in the middle order; positions four and five; where innings die more often than they bloom. From there, she’s scored more than 4000 runs, the most by any woman in the world.

She Rise: From Silence To Stadium Roars

The 2017 final may have ended in heartbreak, but it sparked a revolution. More than 120 million Indians watched it live. Young girls started picking up bats and balls, not because they wanted to be “like Virat Kohli,” but because they wanted to be Harmanpreet Kaur.

Since then, India’s women’s team has reached the finals of 2020 T20 World Cup, 2022 Commonwealth Games, and 2024 Asia Cup. They lost all three, but each time, Harman stood in front of cameras, steady and proud, saying, “We’ll cross the line next time.”

The Moment That Changed Everything

And she did.

The 2025 ODI World Cup; her fifth, but the first as captain on home soil; became the story she’d been waiting to finish. India stumbled early but held their nerve, beat Australia in the semis again, and then conquered South Africa in the final.

When the last catch landed in Harman’s hands, she looked up, almost in disbelief. Years of pain, loss, and effort folded into one quiet smile.

In the press room, still trying to process it, she said, “I’m numb. I can’t explain. We just believed. We kept believing.”

The Girl Who Made The World Look

Harmanpreet Kaur was born on Women’s Day in 1989, as if the date itself knew what she was meant to become. From dusty grounds in Punjab to packed stadiums, from hand-me-down kits to designer jerseys, she saw Indian women’s cricket crawl, stumble, and finally soar.

She didn’t just play for runs or records. She played for a place; for a generation of girls who now know they belong here.

When people say, “He is him,” cricket found its answer in her.

Because Harmanpreet Kaur didn’t wait for women’s cricket to change. She became the reason it did.

Teams:

Sri Lanka Women (Playing XI): Vishmi Gunaratne, Chamari Athapaththu(c), Hasini Perera, Harshitha Samarawickrama, Nilakshi de Silva, Kavisha Dilhari, Kaushani Nuthyangana(w), Malki Madara, Inoka Ranaweera, Kawya Kavindi, Shashini Gimhani

India Women (Playing XI): Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Harmanpreet Kaur(c), Richa Ghosh(w), Amanjot Kaur, Sneh Rana, Arundhati Reddy, Vaishnavi Sharma, Kranti Gaud, Shree CharaniChamari Athapaththu:

We are going with the same XI. I am still confident in my team, we’ve backed a few youngsters and want to give them more opportunities. The key for us is to play positive cricket in the middle overs. In the last game we played a few shots behind square. Today, we want to play straighter - focus more on long-on and long-off, play to our strengths and build partnerships. Hopefully, our batters step up today.

Harmanpreet Kaur: This is something I’m really not used to, but I’m enjoying it. Winning tosses isn’t really my cup of tea, but I’m happy we got this one. We are going to bowl first. Deepti isn’t well today, so Sneh Rana comes back into the side. It was a really good wicket to play on. Nothing much changed midway through the game; we just stuck to our plans and our approach. Hopefully, we can continue the same approach.India Women have won the toss and have opted to field

SLW 128-9(20)

INDW 29-1(3.2)

CRR:8.7

REQ:6

India Women need 100 runs

Congrats India W

India Women won by 7 wkts

SLW

128/9(20)

INDW

129/3(11.5)

made absolute light work of this run chase. If they needed 14.4 overs to get 121 in the first T20I, tonight they’ve cruised to 128 in just 11.5 overs, underlining their dominance with both bat and ball. Shafali Verma, who missed out in the opening game, was back to her destructive best. Although India lost Smriti early, Jemimah Rodrigues walked in and immediately kept the tempo high. The pair found boundaries regularly, stitching together a brisk 58-run stand that virtually sealed the contest. Jemimah fell for 26, but Shafali continued unfazed - bringing up her fifty off just 27 balls and finishing unbeaten on 69, guiding India to a commanding victory. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, will be disappointed. They were below par with the bat, but even more untidy with the ball and in the field - too many loose deliveries and misfields allowed India to race away without pressure. Hang around for the presentations..

Highest run-rate in a 50-plus partnership for IND-W in T20I

14.25 (57 off 24) - Mithali Raj, J Rodrigues vs SL, Katunayake, 2018

13.54 (70 off 31) - Rocha Ghosh, Raghvi Bist vs WI, DY Patil, 2024

12.88 (58 off 27) - J Rodrigues, Shafali Verma vs SL, Vizag, 2025*

12.53 (94 off 45) - Harleen Deol, S Mandhana vs ENG, Nottingham, 2025

India Women have now won nine of their last 11 games against Sri Lanka in T20Is since 2020. Sri Lanka's last T20I win against India in India had come back in 2014. Since then, they've lost all five matches they've played there.