BENGALURU: A measured fifty by captain
Meg Lanning
drove Delhi Capitals to an adequate 163 for eight against Gujarat Giants in their
Women's Premier League
match here on Sunday.
Lanning (55, 41b, 6x4, 1x6) used her experience to pace her innings well and build a couple of good partnerships after Giants opted to field first.
Both the teams made two changes apiece for this match.
Giants replaced injured Harleen Deol and Sneha Rana with Tarannum Pathan and Veda Krishnamoorthy, while the Capitals rested pacer Marizanne Kapp and Minnu Mani, bringing in Annabelle Sutherland and pacer Titas Sadhu.
Shafali Verma (13, 9b), as usual, flew off the traps with a six and four off left-arm spinner Tanuja Kanwar but her cameo came to an end very soon.
Verma's uppish flick of pacer Meghana Singh, the most successful Gujarat bowler with a three-wicket haul, went straight to Laura Wolvaardt near backward square leg.
The dismissal brought Lanning, who was dropped on 30, and in-form Alice Capsey together. They scored 38 runs for the second wicket, helping Delhi to reach 51 for 1 in the Power Play segment.
Once Capsey departed, an edgy Jemimah Rodrigues (7 off 10) helped Lanning add 47 runs for the third wicket. Lanning shed her low-gear approach during this passage to pull some top shots out of the draw such as a massive hit for six over long-off off Kathryn Bryce.
Lanning reached her fifty in 39 balls but could not stay in the middle for long as her slash off Meghana settled in the hands of D Hemalatha at cover point.
The return of Lanning to the dug-out dashed Delhi's attempt to up the scoring rate as they lost wickets at regular intervals and also failed to fetch a boundary for 24 balls between 15.2 and 19.3 overs.
The Giants could have restricted their rivals to a much lower total had they been a tad sharper on the field.
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