Women’s T20 Challenge: Supernovas have their task cut out against Trailblazers

Bengaluru, November 6: The Harmanpreet Kaur-led Supernovas have their title defence on the line as they take on an upbeat Smriti Mandhana-led Trailblazers in the Women's T20 Challenge at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Saturday (November 7).

The match starts at 6pm local time (7.30pm IST) and will be shown live on Star Sports Network.

Brimming with confidence after a crushing win over Velocity, Trailblazers will aim for another win to finish with two victories from as many matches and enter the final on November 9 with momentum behind them.

They will be up against Supernovas, a team smarting from defeat in the tournament opener against Velocity. Another loss would knock Supernovas out of the tournament.

Trailblazers came up with a stellar bowling performance to bundle out Velocity for 47 with England's left-arm spinner Sophie Ecclestone, the world No.1 T20 bowler, returning impressive figures of four for 9 in 3.1 overs.

Smriti will be hoping that the bowlers continue the good work against a strong Supernovas line-up. The southpaw will be aiming to showcase her skills and expect her batting unit to step up.

Supernovas need a win to stay alive in the tournament as that will bring the net run rate (NRR) into play. Velocity have a negative NRR of -1.869 and in case of a three-way tie, the Mithali Raj-led squad will get eliminated.

Velocity, on their part, will hope Supernovas lose allowing them to advance to the summit clash, a scenario which Mithali felt her team could have avoided.

Harmanpreet, the Indian T20 captain, will look to build on her performance in the tournament opener and hope Sri Lankan Chamari Atapattu continues her good form.

Supernovas appeared to have the match under control before Sushma Verma and Sune Luus took it away from them as the bowlers crumbled under pressure. On the Sharjah pitch that has gotten slower progressively, the spinners will have a big role to play.

Ecclestone will again be a key bowler for Trailblazers with fellow left-arm spinner Rajeshwari Gayakwad and veteran Jhulan Goswami expected to back her up.

Both Supernovas and Trailblazers possess quality spinners and how the batters of the two sides fare could well decide the fate of the match.

The Teams (from):

Supernovas: Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Jemimah Rodrigues (vc), Chamari Atapattu, Priya Punia, Anuja Patil, Radha Yadav, Taniya Bhatia (wk), Shashikala Siriwardene, Poonam Yadav, Shakera Selman, Arundhati Reddy, Pooja Vastrakar, Ayushi Soni, Ayabonga Khaka and Muskan Malik.

Trailblazers: Smriti Mandhana (c), Deepti Sharma (vc), Punam Raut, Richa Ghosh, D Hemalatha, Nuzhat Parween (wk), Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Harleen Deol, Jhulan Goswami, Simaran Dil Bahadur, Salma Khatun, Sophie Ecclestone, Natthakan Chantham, Deandra Dottin and Kashvee Gautam

(With PTI inputs)