England held their nerve to keep the T20 series alive with a thrilling last-ball victory by five runs against India at The Oval. <\/b><\/p>\n
Chasing 172 to win, India needed 12 from the last over and six off the final ball, but seamer Lauren Bell had opposing captain Harmanpreet Kaur caught at mid-off for 23 – and the hosts now only trail 2-1 in the series with two matches to play. <\/p>\n
The tourists, eyeing a series win at the earliest opportunity, were in full control, needing 49 from 42 balls with nine wickets in hand before an eye-catching spell of fast bowling from Lauren Filer changed the course of the game. <\/p>\n
Filer had Jemimah Rodrigues caught behind for 20 and star batter Smriti Mandhana, who made 56, was also beaten for pace and caught at mid-on as the quick regularly reached speeds of 79mph.<\/p>\n
Harmanpreet’s knock kept India in the hunt but England restricted them to 166-5 despite a flurry of dropped chances in a chaotic ending, setting up a tantalising encounter in the fourth of five T20s at Old Trafford on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
England’s first innings also provided plenty of drama, as they raced to 137-0 after fine half-centuries from Sophia Dunkley and Danni Wyatt-Hodge, before losing nine wickets for 31 runs in the space of 4.4 overs, and finishing with 171-9. <\/p>\n
Dunkley made 75 from 53 balls and Wyatt-Hodge struck 66 from 42, but Sophie Ecclestone’s 10 was the only other score in double figures in a collapse which included three batters falling first ball. <\/p>\n
It is yet to be confirmed whether captain Nat Sciver-Brunt, who was ruled out of the match with a hip injury, will be fit for the rest of the series. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England held their nerve to keep the T20 series alive with a thrilling last-ball victory by five runs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-238935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114798180793227429","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}