Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 30 (IANS) Captain Harmanpreet Kaur led from the front with a commanding 68 off 43 balls, while India’s bowlers delivered a disciplined collective effort to seal a 5–0 whitewash over Sri Lanka in the five-match T20I series, as the hosts capped off a memorable 2025 season with another emphatic win at home.

The clean sweep also marked India Women’s third 5–0 victory in a bilateral T20I series, following similar results against West Indies in 2019 and Bangladesh in 2024.

India rested star player Smriti Mandhana for the match and had G Kamalini play her first T20I match as a replacement.

Kamalini opened the innings with a score of 12. Harmanpreet's innings provided India the necessary security in the middle overs and propelled them to 175 runs with a total of 7 wickets down. Sri Lanka's bowlers did a good job; each of Kavisha Dilhari, Chamari Athapaththu, and Rashmika Sewwandi took 2 wickets.

In reply, Arundhati Reddy derailed Sri Lanka's chase by removing the very threatening Athapaththu in the second over of the match, who scored just two runs on that occasion. Although Sri Lanka lost their early wicket, they began to build some valuable momentum as Hasini Perera and Imesha Dulani formed a much stronger second-wicket partnership, which contributed 79 runs.

Dulani's innings led to her first T20I fifty and was finally stumped out by Amanjot Kaur in the 12th over after an inning of 50 runs off 39 balls.

Perera continued to represent Sri Lanka as she reached her first T20I fifty in eight matches -- now recorded as the second most number of innings taken by a full-member team to achieve their first fifty in T20I matches. Scoring 81 runs from 42 balls while also recording eight fours and one six, however, she too succumbed to Shree Charani's bowling in the seventeenth over.

After the two fifties, the middle and lower order crumbled as only Rashmika Sewwandi made it to double figures with an unbeaten score of 14 runs from eight balls.

On the bowling side of things, India were outstanding with six players collecting at least one wicket. Deepti Sharma set the record, becoming the leading wicket-taker in Women's T20I after removing Nilakshi de Silva, whilst Sneh Rana and Shree Charani both finished with identical figures of 1/31.

As a result of this latest loss to India and other earlier defeats in a five-game T20I series against the West Indies, it appears as though Sri Lanka's woes have continued, as they now find themselves at 0-5 in the series against both of these excellent teams.

Brief scores:

India Women 175/7 in 20 overs (Harmanpreet Kaur 68, Arundhati Reddy 27; Kavisha Dilhari 2-11, Chamari Athapaththu 2-21) beat Sri Lanka Women 160/7 in 20 overs (Hasini Perera 65, Imesha Dulani 50; Deepti Sharma 1-28, Sneh Rana 1-31) by 15 runs

--IANS

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