Indian women whitewash West Indies 3-0
Indian women's cricket team secured a 3-0 ODI series victory against the West Indies. Indian side edged past the visitors by 15 runs in the 3rd ODI. Veda Krishnamurthy's 71 helped set up a target of 199, and left-arm spinner Rajeshwari Gayakwad's impressive 4 for 34 played a big role in claiming the whitewash. T20I series between the two begins on 18 Nov.
West Indies Women's Tour of India was scheduled to be played from 10-22 Nov, 2016. The tour consists of a series of 3 One Day Internationals (ODIs) and 3 T20 Internationals. All the six matches will be held in Vijayawada. The three ODIs will count towards the ICC Women's Championship which acts as a qualifying competition for the 2017 World Cup.
ICC Women's Championship is an ongoing multi-year, bilateral, ODI competition. It started in Aug 2014 and features top 8 teams. At the end, top 4 teams automatically qualify for 2017 World Cup. Bottom 4 will compete for place in World Cup, against 6 regional qualifiers.
Indian Women's cricket team is currently ranked No. 4, behind Australia, England and New Zealand, ranked in that order. The ODI squad selected against West Indies consisted of - Skipper Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Thirush Kamini, Mona Meshram, Veda Krishnamurthy, Jhulan Goswami, Shikha Pandey, Devika Vaidya, Sushma Verma, Sukanya Parida, Poonam Yadav, Ekta Bisht, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, and Deepti Sharma.
Before the ODI-series, India were in 6th place in ICC Women's Championship points table with 13 points. India finished the campaign with 19 points and will have to earn the World Cup qualification. West Indies were in 4th place and remain there, with 22 points.
The victory is significant considering that it was the first time India whitewashed a top-6 ranked team in 14 years. It happened last time in 2002 when India beat England 5-0, in Pune. This also comes as a big boost to the Indian women's side who had a horrendous WT20 campaign in March, where they failed to qualify for Semis.
