Women's T20 Challenge: Supernovas and Velocity clash in exciting final

Over the last few days, a lot of people made their way to the Sawai Mansingh Stadium to watch India’s finest women cricketers play along with some of the biggest stars from across the globe.

If the way the cricket fans of this beautiful city – which boasts architecture as stunning as most other places in India – have responded to three league matches of the Women’s T20 Challenge is anything to go by, there could be full house for the final on Saturday.

In what promises to be a cracker of a contest, both Supernovas and Velocity have played some good cricket over the last few days.

But, the game they played on Thursday night wasn’t particularly memorable for the way it finished.

Needing to achieve a net run-rate better than that of the third team in the competition, Trailblazers, Velocity played it safe.

Mithali Raj’s girls decided not to go for the target set by Supernovas, after it lost the wicket of their hard-hitting one drop from England, Danielle Wyatt.

No doubt it is Supernovas that has played better cricket. Harmanpreet Kaur’s girls had fought hard in their opening match, too, before going gone down by just two runs to Smriti Mandhana’s Trailblazers.

Harmanpreet was largely responsible for taking her side close, with her ferocious hitting in the final over.

Supernovas' batting has a lot of firepower in fact, with the presence of players like Jemimah Rodrigues, Sophie Devine and Chamari Atapattu.

For its big shots, Velocity would be looking to batters like Wyatt, Hayley Matthews, Amelia Kerr and the 15-year-old Shafali Varma, who alone showed what a competition like this could do to Indian women’s cricket.