Supernovas beat Trailblazers by 49 runs in Women's T20 Challenge opening match

Pooja Vastrakar picked up four wickets for just 12 runs in a brilliant pacebowling display as Supernovas notched up an easy 49run win over Trailblazers in a recordbreaking opening match of the Womens T20 Challenge on MondayThe 22yearold Vastrakar claimed the wickets of Trailblazers captain Smriti Mandhana 34 her opening partner Hayley Matthews 18 No 4 Sophia Dunkley 1 and Salma Khatun 0 in two separate spells to tear apart the batting lineup of the defending championsEngland leftarm spinner Sophie Ecclestone and Australia allrounder Alana King chipped in with two wickets apiece as Trailblazers could only score 114 for 9 in 20 overs while chasing 164 The Supernovas had earlier scored the tournaments highestever score of 163 all out after opting to batTrailblazers made a strong start to their chase with Mandhana and Matthews putting on 39 runs for the opening wicket in five overs But Vastrakar struck triple blows on Trailblazers to leave the defending champions in deep trouble She first had the wicket of Matthews off the last ball of the fifth over and then dismissed skipper Mandhana and Dunkley in the space of four balls in the eighth overWickets kept on tumbling in quick succession as Sharmin Akhter 0 was out in the next over for a duck to be Kings first victim of the dayRuns were hard to come by for Trailblazers as they reached 71 for 4 at the halfway mark But two quick wickets in the 11th over bowled by Ecclestone virtually ended the contestEcclestone had Richa Gosh 2 off the second ball of the over and Arundhati Reddy 0 was run out in the next delivery as Trailblazers batters looked in a hurry to return to the hut Harmanpreet Kaur brought Vastrakar for her second spell and the pacewoman got immediate success by having Khatun to reduce Trailblazers to 73 for 7 at the end of 12 oversAsking rate had climbed more than 11 runs an over by then and onedown Jemimah Rodrigues 24 tried to make a match out of it but she also fell in the 14th over to Meghna Singh to extinguish any hopes of Trailblazers fight backEarlier Supernovas captain Kaur topscored with 37 off 29 balls while Harleen Deol and Deandra Dottin chipped in with 35 and 32 respectively They however lost five wickets in the last two overs for just eight runs including that of Kaur in a dramatic collapseMatthews was the pick of the Trailblazers bowlers with figures of 3 for 29 while Salma Khatun took two for 30 runsThe Supernovas made a rollicking start reaching to the tournaments bestever powerplay score of 58 for one with opener Dottin 32 off just 17 balls in ominous formDottin hit Renuka Singh for three fours in the third over from which the Supernovas took 14 runs She was however run out in the fifth over while backing out too far from her crease She hit five fours and one six in allThe other opener Priya Punia 22 continued a bit longer before she was out in the eighth over Young Deol showed tremendous form and shared 37 runs for the third wicket with captain KaurShe hit Matthews for consecutive fours in the eighth over but could not convert her start to a big score getting out in the 12th over Kaur coming out at the fall of Punia in the eighth over took the onus of steadying the ship on herself though her side lost wickets in clustersSune Luus 10 fell to Rajeshwari Gayakwad 134 in the 15th over before King 5 became Khatuns second wicket of the dayVastrakar and Kaur were out in the space of three balls in the 19th over before Supernovas lost another three wickets in the dramatic final overThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever