The New Zealand women's cricket team's batting woes returned to haunt them in England today as they slumped to a three-wicket defeat against India to finish bottom of the quadrangular Twenty20 series.
Batting first, the White Ferns could make only 95 for seven in Aldershot in the playoff for third
and fourth and India, who New Zealand beat by 25 runs on Sunday, snuck home with a ball to spare.
India captain Jhulan Goswami led her side to the win, making an unbeaten 33 to see them to victory.
Earlier, Amy Satterthwaite led the way with the bat with 35 and Liz Perry chimed in with 18 but despite medium pacer Kelly Anderson's three for 17, India kept their cool to grab third place.
Captain Aimee Watkins said the team thought their score would be enough on a slow wicket, but their bowling let them down.
"Everyone's really disappointed. We bowled both sides of the wicket - we also gave away too many extras.
"Batting first was definitely the right thing for us to do. Going into bowl, we felt we had enough. The asking rate shot up, but after the 10th over, we had a couple of overs where we gave away too many runs," she said
In the final at the Rose Bowl in Hampshire, hosts England continued their unbeaten run in the tournament to down Australia by 16 runs.
New Zealand will hope for better results in the quadrangular one-day series when they face Australia in their opening match in Chesterfield on Thursday night (NZT).
- NZPA
