Sri Lanka Women Take the Series as Pakistan Avoid the Sweep

Pakistan's women finished their tour of Sri Lanka with a win, and Sri Lanka finished it with the series.

The third T20I

At Dambulla on 4 August, Sri Lanka were held to 113 for six from their 20 overs. Chamari Athapaththu top scored with 34 from 33 balls, hitting five boundaries, and Momina Riasat was the pick of the Pakistan bowlers with two for 18 from her four overs.

Pakistan chased it down with 10 balls to spare, reaching 115 for six for a four wicket win. Ayesha Zafar's 39 from 31 was the innings that made the difference and she took the match award. It was, in the end, a consolation: Sri Lanka had won the first two and the series finished 2-1.

The player the series turned on

Sri Lanka's captain is the most familiar name in this fixture, and our own ball-by-ball record explains why. In our women's T20 data she has played 127 innings for Sri Lanka since 2012, scoring 3,450 runs at an average of 29.0 and a strike rate of 117.3, with a highest score of 119.

The number that stands out is not the average. It is how often she goes big. She has passed fifty in 18 of those 127 innings, which is 14.2 per cent of the time. Across every women's T20 innings in our data, a batter reaches fifty 3.9 per cent of the time. She does it roughly three and a half times as often as the field.

Against Pakistan specifically our data holds 13 innings, 255 runs and a best of 63. And her recent form has been steadier than a 34 might suggest: across her last 10 innings in our data she averages 35.8, a run that includes a hundred.

What it means for both sides

For Sri Lanka this is a series won at home against a side ranked near them, with their captain contributing without having to produce the extraordinary. For Pakistan the last night was the useful one. Chasing 114 is not a test of much, but doing it after losing a series is a habit worth having.