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Shafali and Jonassen power Delhi Capitals into playoffs
Shafali Verma and Jess Jonassen smashed merciless unbeaten fifties to steer Delhi Capitals (DC) into the WPL 2025 playoffs with a nine-wicket win over Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) on Saturday. It was RCB’s fourth defeat in a row, and they ended up without a single win in the Bengaluru leg of the tournament.
Ellyse Perry once again led RCB’s fight after they were sent in, and scored an unbeaten 60 to help the side post 147 for 5, but it wasn’t enough against the table-toppers. DC rode on the efforts of Shikha Pandy and debutant left-arm spinner Shree Charani, who picked up two wickets apiece.
The chase though got off on a tricky note for DC, who lost Meg Lanning in the third over, but Shafali and Jonassen put on an unbroken 146 for the second wicket, off just 77 balls – the highest partnership for any wicket in a WPL run chase. The Chinnaswamy was left silenced as DC romped home with 27 balls remaining.
Perry came into this game with three fifties in RCB’s first five games, and she was once again central to her team’s fortunes on a slow surface. While there were starts from Danni Wyatt-Hodge (21 off 18) and Raghvi Bist (33 off 32), neither went on to a big score. It was left to Perry to anchor the innings and keep the scorecard ticking at a healthy rate.
Coming in after Pandey dismissed Smriti Mandhana in the second over, Perry was up and running in Pandey’s next over by crashing a wide half-volley over the covers for four. She then hit a six each off spinners Jonassen, Charani and Minnu Mani.
Perry put on a brisk 44 with Wyatt-Hodge for the second wicket, and 66 with Bist for the third. With Bist struggling to middle the ball, however, that partnership consumed 54 balls.
Perry reached her fourth fifty of the season, off 37 balls, in the 14th over. At the end of the 16th over, RCB were 119 for 2 and eyeing a strong finish. But they fell apart around Perry, scoring just 28 in the last four overs for the loss of three wickets. Perry only faced seven balls in the last five overs, scoring eight runs off them.
With 25 runs in six innings, Perry has overtaken Nat Sciver-Brunt to become the tournament’s leading run-scorer.
DC preferred Charani over fast bowler Titas Sadhu and she looked in her element. Unfazed by the huge turnout at the Chinnaswamy, Charani used the turn that was on offer in the first innings, kept the stumps in play, constantly angling the ball into middle and leg over the course of a tight spell. She removed Bist and Richa Ghosh in a momentum-changing 17th over to deflate RCB at the death, and ended with figures of 2 for 28 from four overs.
Mandhana owned the Chinnaswamy during WPL 2024, scoring 219 runs in five innings, including two half-centuries, at the astonishing strike rate of 154.22. This season, however, she has perished to ill-judged shots, accumulating just 50 runs in four innings at her home ground at a strike rate of 102.04. On Saturday, she chased a Pandey delivery shaping away from off stump and edged to Lanning at wide slip.
RCB had an excellent start to the powerplay, conceding just five runs in the first three overs. Renuka Singh displayed excellent control with her swing bowling, with almost all of her deliveries finishing within the stumps. She removed Lanning for a 12-ball 2, with Perry taking a sharp chance at mid-on. But once Jonassen joined Shafali, runs started flowing for DC, and it became hard for RCB to keep them quiet.
Today was the second time Jonassen walked in at No. 3. She had scored another unbeaten 61 from that position at the same ground against Gujarat Giants. With DC’s top order predominantly batting right-handed, they promoted the left-handed Jonassen and it began to unsettle RCB. Jonassen looked fluent in her 38-ball stay, hitting nine fours and a straight six off left-arm spinner Ekta Bisht.
Shafali, who had been out in the 40s three times before today, played a composed knock, showing a desire to not throw her wicket away after a bright start. She ended up with her top score of the season, smashing eight fours and four sixes (two each on the off and leg sides) and hammered the bowling to all parts.
As DC neared their target, RCB’s bowling began to wither, and Shafali and Jonassen duly punished them. From 68 for 1 after nine overs, DC sprinted to their target, hitting eight fours and five sixes while ransacking 83 runs off what turned out to be the last 39 balls of their innings.
Brief scores:
Delhi Capitals Women 151 for 1 in 15.3 overs (Shafali Verma 80*, Jess Jonassen 61*; Renuka Singh 1-12) beat Royal Challengers Bengaluru Women 147 for 5 in 20 overs (Danni Wyatt Hodge 21, Ellyse Perry 60*, Raghvi Bist 33, Georgia Wareham 12*; Marizanne Kapp 1-18, Shikha Pandey 2-24, Shree Charani 2-28) by nine wickets
[Cricinfo]
Two people have died and several are feared buried after landslides in New Zealand’s North Island.
The deaths were reported at Welcome Bay, while rescue workers are still searching through rubble at a different site in a popular campground on Mount Maunganui.
There are no “signs of life”, authorities said, adding that they have a “rough idea” of how many people are missing but are waiting for an exact figure. They provided no other details except that the group includes “at least one young girl”.
The landslides were triggered by heavy rains over the last few days, which led to flooding and power outages across the North Island. One minister said the east coast resembled “a war zone”.
New Zealand is “heavy with grief” after the “profound tragedy” caused by recent weather, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on X.
Footage from the campsite on Mount Maunganui, an extinct volcano, shows a huge slip near the base of the volcanic dome, as rescuers and sniffer dogs comb through crushed caravans and flattened tents.
Authorities said that the search would continue through the night. “This is a complex and high-risk environment, and our teams are working to achieve the best possible outcome while keeping everyone safe,” said Megan Stiffler, the deputy national commander for the Urban Search and Rescue team,
The extinct volcano is a sacred Māori site and one of the most popular campgrounds in New Zealand, with a local holiday website describing it as a “slice of paradise”. But it has been repeatedly hit by landslides in recent years.
“I heard this huge tree crack and all this dirt come off, and then I looked behind me and there’s this huge landslide coming down,” Australian tourist Sonny Worrall told local broadcaster TVNZ.
“I’m still shaking from it now… I turned around and had to jump out of my seat and just run,”he added. He saw it happen while swimming in a hot pool.
Hiker Mark Tangney told the New Zealand Herald he heard people screaming from under the rubble. “So I just parked up and ran to help… We could hear people screaming: ‘Help us, help us, get us out of here’,” he said.
Those calls persisted for about half an hour and then went silent, Tangney said.
A surf club in another part of Mount Maunganui has been evacuated following fears of more landslides.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Bay of Plenty where Mount Maunganui sits, and various parts of the North Island, including Northland, Coromandel, Tairāwhiti and Hauraki.
Several areas reported their wettest days on record on Thursday. Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, for example, received three months worth of rain within a day, according to local media.
Some 8,000 people were without power as of Thursday morning, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported.
The wife of a man who was swept away in the Mahurangi River is holding out hope that he will survive.
“I know his personality is strong, wise,” she told RNZ, adding that he was a fisherman back home in Kiribati and knew how to swim and dive.
The man, 47, was driving to work with their nephew when the car they were in fell into the river.
He had pushed the nephew towards a branch so the nephew could hoist himself onto land; but the older man did not manage get back up himself, according to the report.
“It’s been a very big event for us as a country, really hitting almost our entire eastern seaboard of the North Island,” said Minister for Emergency Management Mark Mitchell.
“The good news is that everyone responded really quickly, and there was time to get prepared. That helps to mitigate and create a very strong response,” he told RNZ.
December to February are typically the sunnier months in New Zealand but in recent years heavy rains and storms have become more frequent.
In February 2023, parts of the island were devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle, which is to date the costliest cyclone to hit the Southern Hemisphere, with damage amounting to NZ$13.5bn ($7.9bn; £5.9bn).
This week’s flooding has added to the toll for the local communities that are still rebuilding.
[BBC]
Following a difficult Ashes tour, what is left of Bazball ran into an old-fashioned spin-bowling choke in Colombo. There were glimmers of brilliance from England in a chase of 272. But four Sri Lanka spinners, sharing six wickets between them, won through comfortably in the end.
Despite measured 60s from both Joe Root and Ben Duckett, England fell 19 runs short, their run rate having stayed below five an over for the majority of the run-chase. And so England, who had made attacking batting their brand for several years now, delivered the kind of insipid batting performance reminiscent of their woes in South Asia in decades gone by.
The likes of Dunit Wellalage and Jeffrey Vandersay would prosper on a dry Khettarama track, but it was Sri Lanka’s sensible batting that had laid the groundwork for this victory. Kusal Mendis’ 93 not out off 117 was the backbone of the innings, with Janith Liyanage punching out a helpful 46, and Wellalage producing the finishing fillip, hitting 25 not out off 12 balls.
Their 271 for 6 was merely a good total, rather than an imposing one. But then Khettarama is a notoriously difficult venue at which to chase. Though Jamie Overton’s late hitting gave England a sliver of hope, Sri Lanka had the match mostly trussed up at 40 overs, England needing to score at more than 10 an over at that stage, with four wickets in hand.
Overton could still potentially have stolen victory in the final over, off which England needed 20. But he turned down a single first ball, and then holed out trying to clear the infield off the next one.
Brief scores:
Sri Lanka 271 for 6 in 50 overs (Kusal Mendis 93*, Janith Liyanage 46; Adil Rashid 3-44) beat England 252 in 49.2 overs (Ben Duckett 62, Joe Root 61, Jamie Overton 34; Pramod Madushan 3-39, Dunith Wellalage 2-41, Jeffrey Vandersay 2-39 ) by 19 runs
[Cricinfo]
Latest News
U – 19 World Cup: Why a slow chase was better than a fast one for Pakistan against Zimbabwe
Pakistan beat Zimbabwe in their final group game of the 2026 Under 19World Cup in Harare, but did so in a manner that also endured Zimbabwe’s qualification to the Super Six, taking advantage of the tournament rules to give themselves the best net run rate possible in the next stage of the competition.
Zimbabwe’s qualification on net run rate, along with Pakistan in Group C, came at the expense of Scotland, who looked poised to qualify at the midway point of Pakistan’s chase of the target of 129. However, Pakistan slowed down significantly from the end of the 14th over onwards and ultimately got to the target in 26.2 overs: had they won before 25.2 overs, Scotland, not Zimbabwe, would have qualified for the Super Sixes.
Pakistan gained a significant net run rate advantage with Zimbabwe qualifying ahead of Scotland owing to the format of the Under-19 World Cup. The tournament rules stipulate that points and net run rate are carried forward from the group stage to the Super Sixes, but only from the matches between the sides that qualify from the group. Pakistan progressed with a better net run rate because they had beaten Zimbabwe by a bigger margin than they beat Scotland.
Former international Andy Flower, who was commentating on the game, defended Pakistan’s “cunning tactics” in the way they paced their run chase against Zimbabwe.
“I thought it was a justifiable tactic on their part,” Flower told ESPNcricinfo. “When they go through to the Super Sixes, they will take their net run rate, which will include the Zimbabwe game but doesn’t include the Scotland game. That means their net run rate is better than if Scotland went through.
“They needed to first establish they weren’t going to lose the game, and then they just slowed down to make sure Zimbabwe got through. Some people may question the ethics of that, but I personally don’t.”
Pakistan had beaten Scotland with 6.5 overs to spare. However, they were poised to get a much larger win against Zimbabwe, one that would not have benefitted them in the Super Six stage if Zimbabwe were eliminated from the group. With Pakistan taking the game to the 27th over, they took the advantage of carrying their net run rate forward for a win achieved with 23.4 overs remaining, rather than one with 6.5 overs to spare. Moreover, they also deprived England, who topped group C, of the net run rate boost they got by beating Scotland by 252 runs in the group stage.
If Pakistan’s attempt to pace their chase in that manner was deemed as deliberate, that could conceivably constitute a breach of the ICC laws. Law 2.11 states that “any attempt to manipulate an international match for inappropriate strategic or tactical reasons” is a Level 2 Code of Conduct offence. However, proving that the slowdown was deliberate could be extremely difficult.
By the end of the 14th over against Zimbabwe, Pakistan had sped along to 84 in pursuit of 129, needing just 45 in 11.2 overs. However, from that point onwards, Sameer Minhas and Ahmed Hussain slowed down, their attacking intent visibly disappearing. They scored only 36 in the next 12 overs, with 89 balls going by without a boundary.
Flower, who was on commentary during the latter stages of Pakistan’s chase, suggested they were aware of the net run rate calculations. “The last ten overs or so, Pakistan have played a cunning game,” he said. “The way Pakistan are going about business, they are probably aware of the fact that if they qualify for the super six along with Zimbabwe, they carry through a better net run rate as opposed to with Scotland.
Pakistan’s attacking intent returned as soon as Zimbabwe’s place in the Super Sixes was secured. With nine required to win, Minhas, the Player of the Match for his unbeaten 74, clobbered Michael Blignaut for two successive sixes over long-on to finish off the game.
As qualification slipped out of Scotland’s grasp, Flower said on air that it “must be hard for Scotland to be watching this”.
However, he defended Pakistan’s strategy of giving themselves the biggest advantage in the next round. “I think it was a fair tactic and didn’t bring the game into disrepute,” he told ESPNcricinfo.
During the 1999 ODI World Cup, Steve Waugh had attempted a similar strategy during Australia’s chase against West Indies at Old Trafford, to gain the advantage of carrying forward points into the Super Six round.
[Cricinfo]
Two dead and several missing in New Zealand landslides
England succumb to spin-bowling choke as Sri Lanka go 1-0 up
U – 19 World Cup: Why a slow chase was better than a fast one for Pakistan against Zimbabwe
Mendis’ 93 not out lifts Sri Lanka to 271 for 6, despite Rashid three-for
We didn’t get justice from ICC: Bangladesh sports advisor
Indonesian Naval Ship ‘KRI SULTAN ISKANDAR MUDA – 367’ arrives in Colombo
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
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