India vs Australia women | Nicole Bolton guides visitors to unassailable series lead

Brief scores: Australia W 287/9 (Nicole Bolton 84, Ellyse Perry 70*; Shikha Pandey 3/61) beat India W 227/10 (Smriti Mandhana 67, Pooja Vastrakar 30; Jess Jonassen 3/51) by 60 runs.

In the second game of the three-match ODI series, India won the toss and invited Australia to bat first and the visitors, who won the first ODI by 8 wickets, managed to get a good start to their innings while Indian spinners Pomoam Yadav and Shikha Pandey found support from the pitch. While Bolton decided to punish the bad balls and played patiently, she couldn't find enough support from her partner Alyssa Healy who got out for 24 to Poonam Yadav when the score was at 54. But Meg Lanning built a partnership with the opener and made sure that Australia piled the pressure back on India as the duo took the team to a score of 128/1 in 25 overs.

While Australia would have thought that they were on the commanding situation, India decided to show their ability and that resulted in a mini-collapse for the Australian team in which Bolton, Lanning and Rachael Haynes got out consecutively to the Indian spinners. However, batting on the other side, Elyssy Perry showed her calmness and tried to regroup the team after that collapse. Perry scored boundaries easily and also handled Indian spinners well. Most importantly, she got good support from Beth Mooney, who helped Australia in reaching a big score. The duo managed to complete their individual half centuries and the team ended up with a good score of 287 runs in 50 overs.

India needed their openers to score runs quickly to be able to keep up with the required run rate, but Punam Raut failed to do that. But Smriti Mandhana started playing an attacking innings and it seemed that the target was very much possible for the team India. However, Jess Jonassen had different plans in his mind as she dismissed Mandhana for 63 before Ashleigh Gardner dismissed her partner Punam Raut for 27 when India were on 99/2. Mithali Raj also failed to make any significant contributions to the team and no one was really able to stay for a long time on the crease. India were at 123/3 at the halfway mark of the innings and still needed 155 runs to win the game.

With Harmanpreet Kaur and Deepti Sharma on the crease, the score was still a chaseable one and all the fans present at the stadium in Baroda expected the positive result. However, leg-spinner Amanda Wellington took the responsibility and got the scalps of Harmanpreet and Veda Krishnamurthy to make the win a formality for the visitors. Sushma Verma and Shikha Pandey were the only hope to take India as close as possible but that was only needed to save them from humiliation. But they also failed to do that and got out for 8 and 15 respectively. Although Pooja Vastrakar scored some quick runs at the end overs, it only helped India crossed the 200-run mark and the team were all out for 227 in the last over, handing Australia a 60-run win and an unassailable 2-0 lead.