India Women vs Australia Women, 2nd ODI - Live Cricket Score, Commentary

Plenty of similarities between the first two ODIs. The nature of the pitch, India's batting (solid start and a stutter towards the end) and the dropped catches. So how did India win this? They picked an extra bowler for this game, put the Aussies under a lot of pressure in the powerplay and kept picking wickets at regular intervals with smart bowling and field placements. On that note, it's time to bring the curtains down on this encounter. The series decider will be played in Delhi on Saturday (20th September). See you there. Cheers...

Smriti Mandhana | Player of the Match: The last two hundreds which I got against Australia were in the losing cause, happy that we won the match today. The game-plan was simple. In the powerplay, you have to make use of the two fielders out, try and play your shots and the build the innings. Whatever is in my slot, I'll go for it. It all depends on the conditions and who we play. You know the Australian team and you need to get 280-290 so that our bowlers get those 20-30 runs extra cushion. It all depends on the surface. The wicket is really flat and i had to be aggressive. Throughout the World Cup as well, I wouldn't have one game completely where I wouldn't be aggressive but depending on the conditions, we change. (On her partnership with Pratika Rawal) We both complement each other well, she's pretty calm and composed, same goes with me. We don't complicate stuff, we just do our stuff. It's going well, hopefully it just keeps going well.

Harmanpreet Kaur: We are happy that we played good cricket today. That's what we discussed in the last team meeting that no matter what, we'll stick to our plans and keep doing the right things again and again. Happy that we got the result in our favour. We talk about keeping things simple and clear, that's giving us breakthroughs in between whenever we need, that's the key for us and we want to keep doing those things again and again. We got the runs from Smriti, others didn't score runs but we were able to get close to 300. That's something we keep talking about, keep batting, stay on the pitch and we'll always get those runs because now we have depth in our batting. Our fielding was a little here and there,. We missed a few chances but our bowlers kept giving us chances and we capitalized. In this series, we wanted to give chance to each and everyone. Happy with today's combination, everyone took the responsibility and did well for the team.

Alyssa Healy: (Done anything differently at the toss?) No, not really, it's good preparation for the World Cup. You don't get to choose every time. India were pretty good today in all facets of the game. We got outplayed a little bit. Great learnings for us heading forward. We did pretty well to hold them back. They were well on par for well over 300, the bowlers dug in really well to keep them to that score. They (India) bowled really well with the new ball and we didn't quite get off to the start we wanted to. They bowled straight with straight fields, they changed their pace nicely as well. It's good to have these opportunities heading into do-or-die World Cups.

India’s fielding this series
Catches taken: 8
Catches dropped: 10 (six today)
They have taken 47 catches and dropped 33 in ODIs in 2025, and their catching efficiency of 58.7% ranks 12th among the 14 teams in the timeframe.

10 of Smriti Mandhana’s 12 ODI hundreds have come in wins; both her previous tons against Australia had ended in defeats (Hobart, 2016 and WACA, 2024).

India’s last win against Australia in a home ODI came at Chepauk in February 2007.

Before today, India’s only previous win against Australia in 14 head-to-head ODIs post the historic 2017 WC semi-final had come by 2 wickets in Mackay in 2021.

Australia’s streak of 13 straight ODI wins has ended. In fact, between their 2-1 defeat in Ashes 2023 ODIs and today, they had won 21 of the 22 completed ODIs, the lone defeat coming in a rain-affected game against South Africa (North Sydney, 2024).

Biggest defeat margins for AUS-W in ODIs (by runs)
102 runs vs IND-W, Mullanpur, 2025
92 runs vs ENG-W, Edgbaston, 1973
88 runs vs IND-W, Chennai (MSV), 2004
84 runs vs SA-W, North Sydney, 2024
82 runs vs NZ-W, Lincoln, 2008

15:02 GMT, 20:32 IST: A comprehensive victory for India to level the series 1-1. Inserted to bat, India posted 292 on the back of Smriti Mandhana's classy century. At one stage, 320+ was on the cards, but the Australian bowlers pulled things back in the latter part to stop India from even getting to 300. The Indian new ball bowlers set the tone upfront. Kranti Goud and Renuka Singh Thakur were spot-on with their lengths, accounted for the Aussie openers and conceded just 25 runs in the powerplay. The spinners did a good job after that. Ellyse Perry and Annabel Sutherland kept the scoreboard ticking with plenty of singles and doubles. Radha Yadav took a superb return catch to dismiss Perry and once Sutherland fell to Arundhati, things unravelled quickly with the visitors losing their last six wickets for 56 runs. Six bowlers were employed by Kaur and all of them contributed.

Kranti Goud to Wareham, THATS OUT!! Bowled!!