The Indian women pacer Renuka Singh performed extremely fabulously in the first ODI against West Indies and grabbed her first five-wicket haul. She was awarded the Player of the Match for his tremendous performance in the game.
Smriti Mandhana’s fiery knock and Renuka Singh's power spell in the match helped the women in blue take a lead in the series by winning the first match. They won by a big margin of 211 runs against the West Indies Women. The first ODI match was played at the Kotambi Stadium in Vadodara on December 22, Sunday.
After the match ended, Renuka Singh said that she felt very good with her performance and also stated that everyone backed her a lot; this is the reason she took her first five-wicket haul. She worked a lot on her fitness; because of that, she was able to bowl eight overs, and the weather really helped them to win the first match.
“Feeling very good. First five-wicket haul in ODIs, and I am happy because everyone backed me so much (to get that five-wicket haul). I have worked a lot on my fitness and hence could bowl eight overs on the trot, and that proves my fitness (on the swing she was getting). The wicket was helping us; the weather got colder. I wanted to hit the right areas, and I got assistance.”
West Indies won the toss and decided to bowl first against India. Smriti Mandhana played a tremendous knock of 91 runs off 102 balls, and Pratika Rawal scored 40 runs off 69 balls, building a partnership of 110 runs, which helped them in raising the confidence of the team. After that, Harleen Deol (44 runs off 50 balls), Harmanpreet Kaur (34 runs off 23 balls), Richa Ghosh (26 runs off 13 balls), Jemimah Rodrigues (31 runs off 19 balls), and Deepti Sharma (14 runs off 12 balls) helped India set up a big target of 314 runs in the first innings.
The West Indies team failed to chase the target of 314 runs and struggled to score runs in front of Indian bowlers. Renuka Singh took 5 wickets, and Priya Mishra took 2 wickets. While Titas Sadhu and Deepti Sharma managed to take a single wicket, and Saima Thakor remained wicketless in this match.