Super Story

This article first appeared in my column "Seamstress" for Wisden India.

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One over.

Twelve runs to get.

 Five wickets down.

Gouher Sultana bowling for the Railways, the defending champions. Shweta Mane and Devika Vaidya batting for Maharashtra, the hosts.

We believed. The odds were against us, but we believed. 

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Five days earlier:

It was the first game of the Elite Group ‘A’ T20 nationals, a tournament that rumours had suggested may not happen at all. My team, Maharashtra, needed 26 off the last two overs to win our first match vs Odisha, in front of our home crowd. We got 15. We lost.

I was disgusted with myself. After bowling a tight first three overs, I had given away two boundaries in the last over. We had lost, and we now had an uphill task ahead of us. We still needed to beat a strong Delhi, minnows Gujarat, and defending champions Railways, to give ourselves the best chance of finishing in the top two. And even that may not guarantee us the result we wanted: qualification for the Super League phase. 

I set the tone in the match vs Delhi. After bowling two maidens, I dismissed both openers in my third over. Devika Vaidya, who was the top run getter in the U19 season, was now showing just how valuable she is with the ball. Her leg spin claimed four wickets, and we contained a strong Delhi batting line up for 82.

After an initial scare, where Amita Sharma hit our opener Priyanka on the head with a bouncer (in a spot very close to where Phil Hughes was hit), we chased the total with a few overs to spare and 9 wickets in hand. But more significant, was the fact that our 18 year old captain got some valuable runs. Smriti Mandhana had had a horrible one day season , with a top score of 28. To see her get some quick confident runs, and anchor the chase, brought joy to her well wishers and lifted a load off her shoulders. 

The next day, Delhi did us the favour of beating Odisha, which opened up the group. Net Run Rate was definitely going to be a factor, so we kept that in mind as we made short work of Gujarat, chasing their total of 63 in the ninth over, with Smriti making 36* off 27 balls, without hitting a single ball too hard. As we hung around to watch Delhi play Railways in the next game, we almost saw our chances diminish. 

Delhi put in a spirited batting performance, with Latika Kumari (who had scored 79* in the previous game vs Odisha) making a run a ball 51. But the real fireworks came from old war horse Amita Sharma(27* off 17), who reverse swept Gouher Sultana for four, not once, not twice, but thrice in one over! The third of those shots was especially spectacular, a switch hit that sailed over the head of a helpless short third man! Delhi ended up with 129.

A Railways win would improve our chances, so we cheered every shot their batsmen played, but watched as the match seemed to slip away from them. When Mithali Raj was bowled with  91 still  needed, we thought Delhi could pull this rabbit out of the hat. But Harmanpreet Kaur and Shravanti Naidu kept Railways in the chase, barely. When Shravanti fell in the penultimate over, it left Railways needing 11 off the last over, with Harmanpreet stuck at the non strikers end.

Harrman had bailed Railways out of trouble in their previous game. Gujarat had Railways reeling, at seven for the loss of four wickets in four overs, when she walked in and stamped her class on the match, smashing 81* off 47 balls, with four sixes. So if anyone had the panoply of shots to get Railways home against Delhi, it was Harman.

As the shadows lengthened, and the odd bird of prey made a swoop at the ground, Reema Malhotra began the final over. Shubhlakshmi swung and missed at one ball, and was out the next. We could see how desperate Harry was to get on strike. Poonam Yadav obliged, but that left her 10 to get off three balls. 

We watched open mouthed and dumbstruck as Harry smashed Reema's quicker delivery over long on for a huge six! She ran two off the next ball, but got only one as Yadav was run out at the other end. Three needed off the last ball, two to tie. But Harman had no intention of tying this match. She smashed the last ball straight where long off mistimed the slide and the ball rolled over the fence for four! Railways rejoiced, Maharashtra breathed a bit more easily, and I reflected on the coming of age of Harmanpreet Kaur. 

As we arrived at the ground the next day, we knew we had to beat Railways. Only that would guarantee us qualification. A loss may have allowed Delhi to slip ahead on run rate. After their openers fell Mithali and Harman kept taking singles and caressing (Mithali) or smashing (Harman) a boundary ever so often.

 When Mithali holed out to long off in the 17^th over, we knew we could keep build some pressure towards the end. Devika delivered yet again, dismissing Harman an over later. We had kept them down to 113. And we backed ourselves to go for the win, and not take the easy run rate option. 

Smriti continued where she had left off against Gujarat, smashing Shubhlakshmi and Kavita Patil for three fours in the first two overs. Railways pulled things back through Ekta Bisht, who dismissed Tejal, Smriti's opening partner. Thereafter, Smriti and Anuja Patil milked the strike, and kept us close to the asking rate. 

By then, a sizeable crowd had gathered to watch, comprising mostly of students waiting for their evening coaching session to start, plus former players and families of the host team. Shadows were creeping along the ground as surely as the required run rate was creeping up. In the dressing room, the countdown had begun, and outside the boundary, the crowd were vociferously getting behind us.

 Shubhlakshmi dismissed Anuja in the 12th over, and Smriti fell in the 14th with 49 still needed off 41 balls. I joined Shweta Mane at the crease, and we ran like hares for every run, I even ran one run short, which I shrugged off, as we tried to reduce the widening gap between runs required and balls left. 

When I was dismissed, I was asked to wait as the umpires checked for a no ball. I hoped against hope that luck would somehow grant me another shot, that I could still affect the outcome of this match in some way. Little did I know that fate would grant me my wish in dramatic circumstances.

One over. Twelve runs to get. Five wickets down.

 Gouher Sultana bowling for the Railways, the defending champions. Shweta Mane and Devika Vaidya batting for Maharashtra, the hosts.

A world class bowler against a well set batsman. We believed. The odds were against us, but we believed. 

Shweta helped the first ball to fine leg for four. Eight off five needed. a two, a run out and two singles meant that we needed three off the last ball.

Shweta slogged to deep mid wicket. The batsmen ran two, and the match was tied! It would go into the Super Over!

A mixture of adrenaline, wonder, and pure joy and excitement coursed through me. And amidst all this, a sillage of regret as I thought back to my one short run! 

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The Super Over. The crucible in which small quantities of the chemicals are mixed together and a fire is set beneath them, provoking them into a reaction. The ultimate condensation of the game's evolution in pursuit of a result. It doesn’t get smaller than this. Or bigger. 

I have only been involved in two matches featuring Super Overs previous to this. In the first, for India vs England Academy in 2011, I remember Harmanpreet smashing an off spinner for a six over mid-wicket to win the game. We knew she would be batting. So we went decided to go with pace for the super over. I was to bowl it, and the match had once again unexpectedly pulled me into its fabric, like a hurricane sucks in an unsuspecting feather. 

But first we had to bat. And Smriti and Anuja did not disappoint. Smriti creamed Shubhlakshmi for two boundaries, and Anuja one. Helped by two wides and one no ball, we notched up 20 runs!  

But we could not relax. None of us had forgotten Harman's heroics against Delhi just a day ago. She was the key, her six hitting ability elevating the danger she posed our attempted upset. So when she was caught at cover second ball, off a top edge, we knew we had a foot in the door of the Super Leagues. Despite Mithali sending the last ball to the point boundary, I conceded 10 of the entire over, and we erupted in an outburst of celebration. Our team mates and the audience streamed over the boundary line towards us! We had just handed Railways only their second ever T20 loss since the tournaments inception, and had sealed a place in the Super League. 

We had believed. 

Our celebration after the match. 

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In the Elite Group ‘B’, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh qualified for the Super Leagues and will join Maharashtra and Railways. In the Plate Division, Karnataka, Goa, Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra and Assam qualified for the Knock out Phase. 

Railways, Andhra, emerge One Day Champions 2014-15

The 2014-15 Elite Division saw a familiar scene with Indian Railways brushing aside all opposition to once again emerge Champions of the One Day competition. Their batsmen established a fruitful relationship with concrete: the top order with the concrete like batting pitches of Rajkot, and their middle order with the concrete floors of the dressing rooms, as they were hardly required to  bat. Chief reasons, were opener Punam Raut, who  notched up scores of 100*. 71* and 98, and Mithali Raj , batting at three, who scored   47, 67 and 49 . Their form ensured that Railways shrugged off their rare loss in the group stage, and continued on their winning ways. 

Punam Raut's form ensured that Railways clinched yet another title.

The real fight, emerged for second and third places. Maharashtra, Delhi and Odisha were matched in a battle of nerves;all three of their encounters were low scoring affairs, which went down to the last over. In the end, Odisha edged past the other two, chasing on both occasions, and scraping home by three wickets against Maharashtra, and one wicket against Delhi. Delhi had to be satisfied with third, while Maharashtra finished fourth. 

The Plate division delivered the unexpected surprise of the season, with unfancied Andhra pipping an in form Goa team to the title in the Final. The only domestic team to have a foreign coach, former New Zealander Maria Fahey, Andhra finished the tournament as the only unbeaten side in both divisions. 

In their respective semi finals, Goa executed their strategy of fielding first to perfection. They allowed their pace bowling quartet, led by Shikha Pandey, to extract early movement, and skittled out Karnataka's much vaunted batting order for 93. Skipper Yetrekar and Pandey then proceeded to anchor the chase and see them home. Andhra meanwhile, made heavy weather of a small total of 120 vs Madhya Pradesh, but managed to cross the line with two wickets to spare, Sneha Dipti's unbeaten 45 seeing her team home. 

In the final, Goa's strategy of fielding first backfired as Andhra opener Monika Sai and No.3 S. Meghana stroked half centuries and set Andhra on route for a strong 189, despite Pandey's three wickets. The total proved too much as Goa failed to chase it down, ending up on 137/8 in their allotted 50 overs, to hand Andhra their first ever national level title. Both teams earned places in the Elite Division for the next season. 

Endgame : Who will be crowned Champions?

This article first appeared in my column "Seamstress" for Wisden India.

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As I write this, the Boxing Day test between India and Australia is into it's fourth day, with the outcome just starting to take shape. My favourtie commentator, Harsha Bhogle, is using one of his favourite analogies, tallking about how the match has moved into its business end, much like a chess match moves into its end game. The pawns have been sacrificed, the strategies revealed, and it often coimes down to who holds their nerve and sticks to their plans better. The same can be said of the women's domestic season, where the next few matches will decide who will be crowned Champions of 2014-15.

In the Elite Division, the four teams who have progressed will play out one of the most evenly contested Super League phases in recent times. Defending Champions Railways, and Delhi from pool A will meet Odisha and Maharashtra from pool B in a round robin format in Rajkot on the new years day. All four teams come in with a 3-1 win loss record from their pools respective pools. Holders Railways will be concerned with the good form of Delhi's batting unit, and Odisha's bowling unit. Odisha, after slumping to a loss against Maharashtra, came back in superb fashion by skittling out Mumbai for 28 and then Tripura for 30 in decent batting conditions. Meanwhile, Delhi will be banking on in form openers Latika Kumari and Priya Punia, who have put on stands of 29, 86, 87* and 67 in the league phase. With the experience of Reema Malhotra and Amita Sharma to come down the order, a great start will be just the launching pad they would want to challenge for the title. Maharashtra's Anuja Patil will look to continue her fine form with bat and ball, and her team will need it to threaten the other three teams. Railways, after suffering a shock defeat to Jhulan Goswami's Bengal, will have shed their skins of complacency and will look to reassert their supremacy. Railways and Delhi will start with an added advantage, having played their pool A Matches at rajkot itslef.

In the Plate Division, as per my prediction in my preview post, Karnataka, Goa, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh made the cut, along with Andhra and Himachal Pradesh. The knock outs will take place in Hyderabad, also from the new years day, with Goa and Andhra having earned byes in their quarter finals. With places in the Elite division next year up for grabs, the stakes are high. Andhra, coached by  former White Fern Maria Fahey, are the only team with an all win record. However, Karnataka, with a star stutted batting line up, and left arm tweaker Rajeshwari to boot, will start favourites on paper. But they must first get past Tamil Nadu in their quarter final. Tamil Nadu will depend heavily on Thirushkamini, who registered a ton against Gujarat in the group stage.


A close endgame awaits as the best teams in India go head to head, and followers of the game will be hoping for a reversal  in the trend of low scoring matches the group stages witnessed. As the pawns are discarded, it remains to be seen which of the more puissant chess pieces will make it all the way across the board and be ordained queen.

Mystery spin in the Womens Game

This article first appeared in my column "Seamstress" for Wisden India.

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Last year, Maya Sonawane was a member of the  Maharashtra team that were joint winners of the women's domestic U-19 competition. She was only 14. For her, it would have been easy to say that she was happy just being a part of the squad of fifteen. She carried the drinks,clapped hard, and cheered her team mates from the sidelines in a tense final, and enjoyed the moment when she could call herself a part of a champion team. It could have been enough. After all, she was just 14.

 It wasn't.

Today, at  just 15 years of age, with 23 wickets from nine matches, she is the 2014-15 season's highest wicket taker in the U-19 competition.

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A few years ago, a local corporator in Sinnar - A town some 30 km from Nashik, the wine capital of India-  built a cricket pitch in his backyard. He wanted his young school-going  daughter to learn to play cricket. No, this school-going girl was not Maya. Maya was the girl who would watch them play on her way home from school, and  hang around and pick up any stray balls that rolled in her direction. Maya didn't really find cricket. Cricket found Maya.


 Her disarming smile and outspoken innocence meant that soon enough, she befriended the girl and her father, and started bowling to the child, occasionally having a go with her bat after she was done.  Maya's older brother soon started accompanying her, in part because he recognised that his little sister had a talent at this, but mostly just to keep an eye on his little sister. A few girls from her locality also started coming along, in part to help the corporator's daughter play, but mostly because they occasionally got a ride in the corporators car afterwards.


Soon, a few boys who represented Nashik District, learned that a pitch existed in their backyard, and started training there instead of making their daily commute to Nashik. They passed on advice on the basics of the game to the girls, and that became the first rudimentary coaching that Maya received.

At some distance from  this makeshift coaching center of excellence, stood one of Sinnar's  major attractions, the Gargoti Museum. It houses a collection of  Zeolites (mineral stones native to the area.) ''They are the stones we use to start a fire'' says Maya, when I asked her what Gargoti meant.

And already, a few stones in Sinnar had started rubbing against each other, kindling sparks of cricket-fire in their young minds.

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It is impossible to miss Maya. Standing just a shade over five feet tall, you couldn't pick her out of a line up.  But give her a ball in hand, and any lay man watching her bowl will tell you that she is different. Her unique bowling action, with her head pointing downwards when she releases her wrist spinners, is what sets her apart. Her arm speed, revolutions, and bounce off the pitch will make a few quick bowlers envious.  Watching her, one immediately thinks of Paul Adams, whom Mike Gatting immortalised in the imaginations of audiences by likening his bowling action to "A frog in a blender". Except that Maya bowls right handed, not left handed like Adams did. Ask Maya about him, and she coolly replies that she has never seen him bowl! "I've heard of him, but only recently. People told me that his action is like mine!''

So popular was Maya's bowling in her hometown, that girls from Sinnar found their parents telling them  to bowl like her! And so, more than one young girl from Sinnar was trying to send down deliveries- a la Paul Adams- at the Maharashtra U19 trial nets. It didn't matter that the girls bowled off spin and medium pace, they made sure they did it like Maya!

Maya in the middle of her ''frog-in-the-blender'' action in her hometown of Sinnar

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 After attending the Maharashtra state U-19 trials as a 14 year old, Maya made her first appearance for the state in the 2013-14 season, though she only played in one match. Her fitness levels, bred naturally by a childhood spent in the great outdoors of Sinnar, impressed her peers and her coaches. But her inaccuracy meant she could not force a place in the starting XI that year. Her heterodox action - the fact that she used her little finger to spin the ball, instead of her ring finger which wrist spinners generally use- meant that standard coaching manuals were of minimal help. So it came down to sheer practice and repetition.

Back home in Sinnar, Maya applied herself to trying to hit the same spot over and over while bowling. The same little finger that she used to give the ball a rip now gave testimony to the amount of hard work she had put in. A large  nodule of raw skin protrudes from the knuckle of her pinky, looking gruesomely like a parasitic growth that does not belong there.

''The seam cuts open the skin every time I bowl'', she says of the wound in the belly of the nodule, an occupational affliction that many spinners share. "Now I have learnt to take care of it with tape."

When the 2014-15 season finally dawned, the pain she had endured in her many sessions of spot bowling bore fruit. In the first match of the season, against Baroda U-19, she took 6-17 in eight overs. Her flight , dip and variations in turn mean that opposition batsmen were afraid to use their feet against her, allowing her to dominate them. Against Gujarat, she returned figures of 4-6 in three overs, including a hat trick.

She continued to shine in the All India leg of the U-19 tournament, taking nine wickets in five matches, including three in the semi final, which Maharashtra lost. The diminutive tweaker though, could hold her head up high, finishing on top of the wicket takers list, her closest competitor a full six wickets behind.

A grinning Maya proudly modelling her first  Maharashtra Sr. team kit

Now as the youngest member of the Maharashtra Sr. squad, Maya faces the prospect of having to raise her game a notch to match the faster,fitter standard of play in senior cricket. Not happy with just being the travelling baby in the team, she wants a place in the starting XI.  But she knows she will have to earn it. Her young age and diminutive frame hide the courage and hunger that she has inside her, and she isn't afraid of taking on the older girls in duels in the nets, even if it means getting hit for six once in a while.


Along with state captain Smriti Mandhana and Devika Vaidya - both still in their teens - Maya will most likely form a core of young talent that Maharashtra is nurturing. She should be a regular in the side in the  years to come. But she can think about that later. Right now she spends her energy trying to land the ball in the right areas consistently, and worries mostly about not being able to watch Chota Bheem while on tour.

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Sr. Domestic season 2014-15 Preview

The 2014-15 one day season will begin on the 6th of December at various venues across the country. For a look at the teams and fixtures,  have a look at my previous post (Plate division group A fixtures have changed since then, with the reintroduction of Rajasthan). The format is unchanged from last year. 

Elite Division Champions Railways have strengthened their squad with the addition of  current internationals Harmanpreet Kaur, Poonam Yadav, besides Priyanka Roy, and Shravanti Naidu. The Elite A pool could well be called the Group of Death. Giving Railways company, are Jhulan Goswami led Bengal,  who won the plate division last year, and whose U19 team recently lifted the national championship.  Then there is Hyderabad,  who are led by a new young captain, M. Shalini.  They ran Railways close in both their T20 encounters last year, and will look to go one better this time. And lastly Uttar Pradesh , last year's runner's up, and Delhi, who will be bolstered by the return of veteran Reema Malhotra. 

Elite group B also promises some close encounters,  with four of the five teams more or less equal in strength, boasting at least one player who has represented India. Underdogs Tripura will be keen to spring a surprise or two as well. 18 year old Smriti Mandhana will lead Maharashtra for the first time in the one day format, and will look to establish her captaincy credentials. Her young team also includes the U19 season's highest run scorer Devika Vaidya, and highest wicket taker, 15 year old Maya Sonawane.

In the Plate division, there are never any clear favourites, and all teams will hotly contest for the top spot in their pools, as this could mean a chance for promotion into the Elite Division next season. Shikha Pandey and Thirushkamini, fresh from strong performances in the recent home series against the Proteas, will look to carry that form into the domestic season. Their teams, Goa and Tamil Nadu respectively, along with Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh are the teams I would watch out for. Karnataka in particular, with Veda Krishnamurthy returning to their ranks, will be hard pressed not to reach the last two.

The Rise and Rise of the West Indies

This article first appeared in my column "Seamstress" for Wisden India.

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Anisa Mohammed (R) became only the sixth player to breach the 100 ODI wickets club, while Stafanie Taylor is currently No. 1 allrounder in ODIs. © Getty Images

My first memory of a women’s cricket team from the West Indies is watching a series they played in India in 2004. My recollection of that time is a bit fuzzy (although that might have something to do with DD Sports’ picture quality) and I cannot recall much except that Asmi Jewellers was sponsoring India Women at the time, which was big news. As for the cricket, an Indian team that was peaking brushed aside the Windes women 5-0 in the One-Day Internationals. It was, for India, a good build-up to the 2005 Women’s World Cup around the corner. For West Indies, I imagine every day was a new step on a steep learning curve for a team just finding its feet.

Fast track to 2009. It’s the ICC Women’s World Cup in Australia, and India would play the West Indies again after a gap of four years. India were not about to take this team lightly, and I watched from the sidelines as our bowlers gave nothing away to shoot out West Indies Women for 84. The total was dealt with easily enough, and another West Indies challenge to one of the ‘big four’ teams was duly brushed aside.

Jump ahead to 2011: the West Indies tour India for five ODIs and three Twenty20 Internationals. I had just made a comeback into the Indian team and played in the customary warm up match. We lost, but not before stretching the visitors a bit. The Indian team was brimming with confidence, but we were in for a rude shock, as we went down in the opening game in Mumbai to a dominant and, truthfully, surprising display from the tourists.

If we thought the slow turning pitches of Baroda would give us the advantage – which they did, we beat them in the second game, only just – it was short lived as the West Indies took the leadin the third match. The fourth game at Rajkot went down to the wire despite a timely ton from Mithali Raj on a featherbed in Rajkot, but we kept the series alive.

It was down to the final match of the series, and in a tense, low-scoring game, chasing 188, West Indies couldn’t hold their nerve and collapsed for 131. The celebrations in the Indian dressing room began, but were muted, for we had just about managed to best an opponent we had never lost a duel to. For this opponent had come back with a stronger body, sharper sword and better armour.

The 2013 World Cup. India, the hosts, and West Indies would face off again, this time in the tournament opener. I danced in the stands as Poonam Raut and Thirush Kamini sent them on a leather hunt and batted them out of the game to set up a crushing win. But that was all the joy Indian supporters would get in that tournament.

As for the West Indies, in the Super Six stage, they turned the tables on Australia, another Big Four team, and usurped a place in the final, edging out holders England. Though they could not repeat their Houdini act in the final, they finished with their best ever World Cup performance. They had officially arrived, and, like their male counterparts, were not afraid to show it, with Gangnam Style celebrations telling us how much they were enjoying their cricket.

Now, West Indies have just completed a 4-0 rout of New Zealand’s White Ferns in the ODIs. Three of those four wins would qualify as crushing, and the last would be called a miracle of self-belief. Currently, they are sitting pretty atop the fledgling ICC Women’s Championship charts. They are statistically the team ranked No. 1 in the world, although the road to the 2017 World Cup is long and the journey has only just begun. But tectonic plates in women’s cricket are shifting, and West Indies, in the eyes of many, have taken India’s place in the Big Four.

Their rise, to an outside observer, has been remarkable. The West Indies Cricket Board certainly seems to take their women’s team seriously, and have appointed Sherwin Campbell, the former Test cricketer, as their coach. They appear to have a clear performance road map in place. Their selectors have on many occasions shown long-term vision. Merissa Aguilleira, the wicketkeeper-captain, has led this team for more than four years now. Out of the team that played in the 2011 series in India, ten players featured in the 2013 World Cup in India. The selectors have chosen and groomed a core of talented players, who have soaked up the experience this continuity has offered them, and have emerged as match-winners.

Anisa Mohammed, the offspinner, at just 26, recently became only the sixth player to breach the 100 ODI wickets club. Stafanie Taylor, the allrounder, is currently No. 1 in the women’s allrounder rankings (ODI). Pacers Shakira Selman and Tremayne Smartt both picked up their maiden five wicket hauls in the series against New Zealand. And everybody knew Deandra Dottin could smash the ball, but watching her bat maturely to amass 271 runs in four ODIs and three T20Is, including three half-centuries and three unbeaten knocks, will give opposition captains worldwide some sleepless nights.

Their true test lies ahead. They will carry confidence from this series when they travel Down Under, where they will need it as they face the world champions, Australia’s Southern Stars. The series, beginning on November 2 with the first of four T20Is, followed by four ODIs, will pit the two biggest-hitting sides in world cricket against each other. It promises enthralling games, and if the West Indies have their way, the Australian summer may just see more Gangnam Style celebrations.

The Format Specific preparation of Sri Lanka and South Africa

This article first appeared in my Column "Seamstress" for Wisden India.

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Chamari Atapattu, the new Sri Lankan skipper, has her work cut out.

Early this year in January, when I turned out for India A in a warm-up game against the touring Sri Lanka Women, I got a good look at most of their players. We almost squeezed out a victory in that game, and I was confident our senior squad would win the One-Day International and Twenty20 International series convincingly. Then, someone in our team insightfully observed: “They aren’t here to play the one-dayers. It’s the T20s they have their sights set on.”

That was prophetic. India easily made a clean sweep of the ODIs, with Gouher Sultana, the left-arm spinner, doing most of the damage. But with their nemesis not part of the Indian T20 squad, the Sri Lankans clinched the three-match T20I series, their first-ever series win against India.

‘’It’s the T20s they have their sights set on.’’ This made sense considering that the ICC World T20 in Bangladesh was just a couple of months away, while the next 50-over World Cup was slated for 2017. This focus on the T20Is reappeared during England Academy’s tour of Sri Lanka in February 2014. The home side fielded a full-strength squad for the 20-over games, but an inexperienced one for the ODIs. Sri Lanka women’s cricket officials had a plan for their team, that much was clear, and it most likely involved at least a last four finish in Bangladesh, if not higher.

And they had the firepower too. Chamari Atapattu and Yasoda Mendis were providing the kind of hammer-and-tongs starts they needed, with Mendis doing most of the hammering. The all-round capabilities of Achini Kaushalya and Sanjeewani Weerakoddy gave them flexibility and strength in the middle order. Led by the experienced Shashikala Siriwardene and boasting an athletic fielding unit, they were more confident as a T20 side than a one-day one.

Alas, the World T20 in Bangladesh was the archetypical anti-climax for Sri Lanka. After pocketing the first group game by handing India a third defeat in four matches, the Islanders proceeded to lose their next three games, and hopes of a more substantial takeaway than a participation certificate were erased. The subsequent resignation of Siriwardene as captain completed the sinking of their proverbial Titanic, which, at the start of their journey, was unthinkable. And last week, the board launched an initial investigation into worrying allegations of sexual abuse of the players reported in a local publication.

While Bangladesh proved the unravelling of Sri Lanka’s dreams, it was the springboard into the limelight for another upcoming side, South Africa. Inhabiting the same pool as favourites Australia and strong challengers New Zealand, few would have predicted that South Africa would be the ones to make a last four appearance. They managed to beat the White Ferns in a T20I for the first time ever to force a three-way tie in the group, and thanks to big wins over Pakistan and Ireland, edged ahead on run rate. Although they ran themselves out in the semifinal, they had announced themselves on the global stage. In making only their second last four appearance in a global tournament, they had repaid the faith their administration was showing in them – Cricket South Africa had recently introduced contracts for six of their women’s players and team sponsor Momentum was backing them in a big way).

So, it was only a matter of time till South Africa pulled something like this off. Just like India’s style of play is suited to Tests, T20 best suits South Africa’s brand of cricket. To give you an idea, the team’s opponents in the semifinal, England, had been unable to hit any sixes in their group games. South Africa hit ten. The power-hitting game that the England (and India) team so covet is well established in the South African unit. When they can extend it consistently to longer, calculated innings, they could post totals that stretch the top teams. Contracts to eight more players in August was just reward for their toils and spoils in Bangladesh.

South Africa and Sri Lanka have more in common than might appear. Both appear to enjoy good support from their home boards. Both teams are looking at T20s as the battleground to announce their ascendancy. And both teams, both “T20 specialists’’, recently faced off in a one-day and T20I series in Sri Lanka, also comprising three ICC Women’s World Championship ODIs. South Africa Women were carrying the momentum of their World T20 appearance and the experience of a T20 series against England. Sri Lanka were hoping for a recrudescence of the wave of optimism with which they rode into the World T20, under their new skipper, Atapattu. So it was not surprising that the series was a closely fought one, with Sri Lanka eventually surrendering the home advantage and South Africa picking up dual series wins.

I can’t wait to see both teams in action in the 2016 World T20 in India. But the truly mouth-watering prospect is seeing how they evolve in time for the ICC Women’s World Cup in England in 2017. Will they be able to build strong ODI teams? There is time aplenty, and both teams need to use it wisely. South Africa Women can take a cue from how England built up to the 2009 World Cup. If they give their core unit of players consistent international exposure, they might see their promising youngsters bloom into match-winners, and peak in time to challenge the best in the world. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, will need to rebuild under a new captain, whose biggest test will be off the field: to hold the team together through the disturbing allegations being made within their board, threatening all the progress so far.