Nagaland women’s under-19 team played 17 overs and made 2 runs in the BCCI one-day Super League match. Kerala got it in one ball.
No record is sacrosanct and especially so in cricket.
The Nagaland women’s under-19 team proved that Friday and how – they were bowled out for all of two runs against Kerala in the BCCI one-day Super League Group B match at the JKC college ground in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh.
Kerala needed just one ball to get the target.
Nagaland opted to bat after winning the toss and lasted for 17 overs. But they made a mere two runs. Opener Menka was the lone player to get off the mark. She scored one run while the other run came from a wide ball. The other nine batters fell for a duck, four of who were scalped by Kerala captain Minnu Mani.
Kerala opener Ansu Raju smashed a boundary off the first ball after the innings started with a wide. A 50 over a side game ended in a rather dramatic fashion.
This is by far the lowest total in a List A game, according to ESPNCricinfo. The previous record was held by the West Indies under-19 team when they scored 18 runs against Barbados in 2007.
Both sides came into the match having lost their opening three games of the tournament but it was Nagaland who remained winless after Friday’s embarrassing defeat.
Earlier this month, a record 136 wides were bowled in another BCCI U-19 women’s one-day match between Nagaland and Manipur on 1 November. After that match, ESPNCricinfo quoted an official as saying that such results raised questions about the preparedness of teams. The official also added that the gap in standards between the top sides and the rest is huge in women’s cricket.
Cricket experts have in the past said that BCCI should back its efforts to spread the sport far and wide with enough support to hone the skills of players in newer regions.
This is seen as posing a two-front challenge: one is about cricket in the northeast and the other is about women’s cricket in general, both of which are major focus areas in the Supreme Court-appointed Lodha Committee recommendations.
The Lodha panel had come down heavily on BCCI for what it said was monopolising cricket and recommended a one-state one-vote policy, leading to smaller states with little experience also getting full membership.