EAST LON­DON – West In­dies Women buck­led un­der the pres­sure of un­beat­en half-cen­turies from Sm­ri­ti Mand­hana and Har­man­preet Kaur, to crash to a 56-run de­feat in their sec­ond game of the Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al Tri-Se­ries in South Africa on Mon­day.

Play­er-of-the-Match Mand­hana struck 74 from 51 de­liv­er­ies and Kaur, 56 off 35 balls – the pair fea­tur­ing in a 115-run, un­bro­ken third wick­et stand – as In­dia Women marched to 167 for two off their 20 overs at Buf­fa­lo Park.

In re­ply, West In­dies Women were lim­it­ed to 111 for four from their 20 overs, She­maine Camp­belle punch­ing a top score of 47 from 57 de­liv­er­ies and cap­tain Hay­ley Matthews hit­ting an un­beat­en 34 from 29 balls.

Vet­er­an off-spin­ner Deep­ti Shar­ma claimed two for 29 to lead In­dia Women’s at­tack and hand them their sec­ond win in as many match­es, fol­low­ing their open­ing suc­cess over South Africa Women.

“In­dia got away with scor­ing [and] our field­ing was a big miss. Hay­ley couldn’t open as she was deal­ing with an in­jury, so she had to bat low­er down, and in or­der for us to win she has to bat as ear­ly as pos­si­ble,” said as­sis­tant head coach Robert Samuels.

“We have to put big­ger scores on the board, not just bat­ting out the 20 overs. Our fo­cus is to get the bat­ting con­sis­tent and to do the ba­sic stuff bet­ter, which will bring more con­fi­dence.

“Hay­ley is get­ting in­to some form, She­maine has had scores in the warm-up and now this match, so lit­tle by lit­tle we are try­ing to get things go­ing by the time we get to the World Cup.”

Choos­ing to bat first, In­dia Women were car­ried by Mand­hana’s en­ter­prise, the silky left-han­der carv­ing out 10 fours and a six, first in a 33-run first wick­et stand with Yasti­ka Bha­tia (18) and then in her cen­tu­ry stand with Kaur, who count­ed eight fours.

West In­dies Women stum­bled ear­ly on in their run chase, Deep­ti knock­ing over open­ers Brit­ney Coop­er (0) and Rasha­da Williams (8), be­fore left-arm spin­ner Ra­jesh­wari Gayak­wad trapped Shabi­ka Gajn­abi for three, leav­ing the in­nings tot­ter­ing on 25 for three in the sev­enth wick­et.

Matthews, en­ter­ing at num­ber five, des­per­ate­ly tried to re­vive her side’s for­tunes, part­ner­ing with Camp­belle in a 71-run fourth wick­et stand, but both lacked the ag­gres­sion re­quired to move the run rate for­ward.

While Camp­belle struck five fours and a six, Matthews count­ed five fours and by the time Camp­belle clipped a low full toss from left-arm spin­ner Rad­ha Ya­dav for Aman­jot Kaur to take a bril­liant div­ing catch in the deep, West In­dies Women still re­quired an im­prac­ti­cal 72 from 15 de­liv­er­ies.

Afy Fletch­er, who fin­ished on 10 not out, struck a cou­ple of bound­aries in the penul­ti­mate over but the game was long gone.

West In­dies Women lost their open­ing game to South Africa Women by 44 runs last week­end.

CMC

Scores:

IN­DIA WOMEN 167 for two off 20 overs (Sm­ri­ti Mand­hana 74 not out, Har­man­preet Kaur 56 not out)

WEST IN­DIES WOMEN 111 for four off 20 overs (She­maine Camp­belle 47, Hay­ley Matthews 34 not out; Deep­ti Shar­ma 2-29)

In­dia Women won by 56 runs.