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Indonesia hits new milestone at ASEAN Women’s T20
Proud cricketeers: The Indonesian team, known as the Garuda Ladies, poses after finishing as a runner-up in the ASEAN Women’s T-20 cricket open tournament in Bangkok, Thailand, on March 12
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span class="inline inline-center">Proud cricketeers: The Indonesian team, known as the Garuda Ladies, poses after finishing as a runner-up in the ASEAN Women’s T-20 cricket open tournament in Bangkok, Thailand, on March 12.(Courtesy of PCI)
The Garuda Ladies, the national women’s cricket team, has continued to make rapid strides since it was formed five years ago.
The Indonesian women’s team finished as the runner-up of the ASEAN Women’s T20 open tournament held in Bangkok last week.
“We are very happy with the way the team performed in this tournament,” said Abhiram Singh Yadav, the vice chairman of the Indonesian Cricket Association (PCI).
“The bowlers were very good throughout the tournament with Andriani eventually taking home the Best Bowler of the Tournament award,” he added.
PCI’s decision to invest in the development of its national teams by providing them with increased exposure at various tournaments is paying off.
The Garuda Ladies, for example, received the chance to learn from experienced teams such as Thailand, an Asian representative in the World cup qualifiers, as well as Tanzania, a strong team in the African region.
Teams from Malaysia, Hong Kong and Bhutan were the other participants in the six-country tournament.
Indonesia took on a strong Hong Kong team in their first game of the tournament and the talismanic Andriani was the star of the game for the Garudas as she dominated with both bat and ball.
Hong Kong batted first and were in the process of building a strong total when Andriani struck to remove the dangerous Yasmin Daswani. She followed up with 3 more wickets for just 5 runs and with the help of Vegy Januarika and Edenyce Eduard restricted Hong Kong to 67 runs.
Chasing 68 to win, the Garudas were in early trouble, but Andriani stood up once again, this time with the bat, and guided the team toward safety, with Indonesia eventually winning by 2 wickets despite a scary collapse toward the end.
In the second game, the Garuda Ladies were in top bowling form as Andriani, Vegy Januarika and Wayan Sariani combined beautifully to bowl out Bhutan for just 48 runs. Chasing low totals are always tricky and it needed the calmness of Tantri Wigradianti and Sariani lower down the order to see Indonesia home with 4 wickets in hand.
The Garuda Ladies were up against Tanzania and Thailand in the next two games and in both the lack of experience did show as Indonesia was comfortably routed by 2 much stronger teams and in both cases the batting needed to show more fight.
Indonesia took on familiar rival Malaysia in the last game of the tournament and prevailed by just 1 wicket in a humdinger of a game.
It was a collective bowling effort that saw Malaysia restricted to 65 in its 20 overs.
The Garudas’ top order once again did not click but the captain Puji Haryanti and Andriani rebuilt the innings. Things started looking very bleak for the Garudas when they needed 20 more to win with just 2 wickets in hand but a superb partnership anchored by Annisa Sulistianingsih ensured that Indonesia scraped to a 1 wicket win in the 20th over.
