Sikkim Under 23 Women’s Ends The Tourney With A Win
The Under 23 Women’s team of Sikkim beats Arunachal Pradesh by 7 wickets in the last league match of Women’s U23 One Day Trophy played at KIIT Cricket Stadium, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha on Saturday 15th of February. Nine matches were played in the league round of this tournament by Sikkim out of which they won 5 matches against Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland. 2 matches were drawn against Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir, and lost 2 matches against Puducherry and Chandigarh. The tournament was hosted by the Sikkim Cricket Association for the plate division at three different venues in Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack, Odisha where 10 teams played a total of 45 matches in the league round.
In the last match, Arunachal Pradesh won the toss and chose to bat first. They scored 142 runs in 50 overs losing 7 wickets. Megha Sharma scored the highest of 72 runs for Arunachal. Sikkim took the early wickets and didn’t give the opponent a chance to have a stable partnership. Their wickets fall in a regular interval of which Mariam Subba took 3 wickets, Aruna Barman took 2 wickets, Pranita Chettri and Rinki Rajak took 1 wicket each. It was a decent total that Arunachal Pradesh put on to chase, but Sikkim being on the stronger side this total was not that hard to achieve.
Sikkim achieved the target in just 34 overs with Nandika Kumari of Pakyong and Rinki Rajak having an opening partnership of 101 runs of which Nandika scored 30 runs. Rinki Rajak scored 84 runs and remained not-out along with Sarojini Giri who scored 10 runs. Sikkim earned 4 Point(s) for this win and ends the season with a total of 24 Point(s) and is in the third position in the league table behind of Chandigarh and Nagaland.
Rinki Rajak of Sikkim topped the most runs table of the reason with 568 runs with 10 sixes and 68 fours, including 1 century and 4 half-centuries. She scored the highest runs of 185 runs and remained not-out against Mizoram. She is also the highest individual run-scorer of the season. Aruna Barman is at number 6 of the most wickets table with 18 wickets. Pranita Chettri of Gangtok and one of the youngest cricketers in the team is among the most economical bowler in the tournament. It is one of the finest tournaments ever played and performed by our women’s team, under Amosh Rai, the coach of the team. All the players are boosted with the team’s performance and want to keep the same momentum in the coming days.