South African opener Lizelle Lee single-handedly demolished India’s chances with career-best unbeaten 132 as India lost by six runs via Duckworth-Lewis(D/L) method in a rain-struck third women’s ODI of the five-match series on Friday.
While chasing 249, Lee starred for the visitors with her brilliant batting performance that came off 131 balls and consisted of 16 fours and two sixes. Currently, South Africa leads series 2-1.
Mignon du Preez and Lee shared a 97 run partnership for the third wicket. India bounced back by picking two wickets du Preez and Marizanne Kapp reducing South Africa to 178 for four in 38th over. However, Lee went on to take the game away from India.
Earlier, Punam Raut struck second consecutive century- 77 off 108 balls to power India to a high score, while Jhulan Goswami picked two wickets giving away just 20 runs in her 9 overs.
Indian batting stalwarts like Smrithi Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet Kaur were ousted one by one starting the gradual collapse of the Indian batting line-up.
Towards the end, Deepti Sharma (36 not out) and Sushma Verma (14 not out) remained unbeaten and shared 27 run partnership for the sixth wicket to take India close to the 250 run mark.