New Delhi, July 10, 2021: Indian women cricket team’s Harleen Deol displayed an outstanding effort on the field on Friday night when she took a scintillating catch to dismiss England’s well-set Amy Ellen Jones and prevented her from reaching fifty. The first T20I was being played at Northampton which India lost.
Put to bat first, England were already 166 for 4 in the 19th over when Amy Jones, batting on 43 off 26 balls, hit India’s Shikha Pandey towards wide long-off. Displaying her athletics skills, Harleen jumped across the boundary ropes, threw the ball inside, and again dived forward to complete one of the best catches ever taken in women’s cricket.
Despite such brilliance in the field, India couldn’t secure a win in the rain-hit match over England. After England scored 177/7 in 20 overs, India could only reach 54/3 in 8.4 overs before the game had to be halted. No play could be possible after that as the DLS method had to come into place to decide the fate of the game according to the reports published in indianexpress.com.
India’s chase suffered a significant blow on just its second delivery as Katherine Brunt (1/11), bowled Shafali Verma for a duck.
Smriti Mandhana did her best to keep the tourists in the game with an exciting 29 off 17, only to perish to Sciver (1/16) at the end of the Powerplay. When captain Harmanpreet Kaur fell for one to Sarah Glenn (1/6) to leave India at 47/3 in the seventh over, victory looked unlikely and so it proved when rain ended the match with her side 18 runs behind the par-score on DLS.
Harleen’s superb catch remained as the highlighting point for Indian fans, here are some of the Twitter reactions:
Just seen arguably the best catch taken by an Indian cricketer in a long time: no, it’s not one of our men in blue but Harleen Deol. Just an amazing effort!
As good a catch one will ever see on a cricket field, from Harleen Deol. Absolutely top class.
