India women cricket team captain Mithali Raj has achieved yet another feat as she scored her fifth consecutive fifty in ODIs. Along with this, she completed 20,000 career runs in-process against Australian women in the first ODI as well. Mithali had scored 75*, 59 and 72 against England whereas another stable 79* came against South Africa in her last four international matches as India captain.

Apart from Mithali Raj (61 of 107), the other significant contributions came from the debutants Yastika Bhatia (35 off 51) and Richa Ghosh (32 not out off 29) as well. However, their middle-order woes continued and they could only manage 225/8 against Australia on Tuesday.

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On the other hand, India openers Shafali Verma (8) and Smriti Mandhana (16), couldn’t capitalize more. Moreover, senior batter Harmanpreet Kaur was out due to a thumb injury. Meanwhile, Mithali Raj single-handedly held the fort and kept the scorecard ticking. Despite playing with a poor strike rate due to save the match and play until 50 overs, her knock came under the scanner too but she received many wishes for her stunning show with the bat.

On the other hand, Bollywood actress Tapsee Pannu congratulated Raj on her Twitter handle and referred to as ‘run machine.’ With her 59th ODI, she took the team post 225 runs in the opening ODI but they failed to restrict Australia and eventually lost. “The run machine!” tweeted Pannu.

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“I think when you are put in to bat first, you need to put a good partnership. A lot more is expected of the bowling department, especially the spinners. They need to perform on these wickets. It wasn’t a performance that wins the game for my team, I need to work on a few areas. There’s a lot expected of the debutants,” said Mithali Raj after India’s loss in the first ODI.

Both Australia and India will take on each other in the next ODI on September 24 at the same venues well.