Opener Shafali Varma provided the entertainment quotient for the crowd witnessing its first international women’s match.

After her dramatic show in the Women’s World Cup final, the irrepressible opening batter from Haryana continued her ascendancy to follow up on her knock of 69 not out in the second T20I with another spectacular innings.

She took apart the Sri Lanka bowlers with 11 fours and three sixes, while not offering a single chance to remain unbeaten on 79 (42 balls) as India chased down a target of 113 in just 13.2 overs.

Shafali didn’t need support from the other end. Opener Smriti Mandhana was out for one and No 3 Jemimah Rodrigues for nine, while Harmanpreet made 21*. Her 79* out of 115 is the highest percentage (68.69%) of runs scored by a single batter in a completed innings for India.

To the delight of the local crowd, the Haryana dazzler finished the game in style, dancing down and hammering the ball back over the bowler to be the standout player of the series so far.

But the win was set up by the bowlers – pacer Renuka Singh and off-spinner Deepti Sharma. The two senior bowlers shared seven wickets between them to bundle out Sri Lanka for a mere 112.

Brought into the XI to give India more aggression with the new ball, Renuka derailed the Sri Lanka innings with a double blow in the last over of the Powerplay while Deepti was brilliant again with three wickets that made her the joint-highest wicket-taker in women’s T20Is, touching the 150-wicket mark in the process.

Renuka is a one dimensional swing bowler, but has a knack of picking wickets in a cluster. She had the same impact today, finishing with her fourth four-wicket haul (4-1-21-4).

She is not always a first-choice like Deepti and is used by the team management depending on the conditions. At the ICC Women’s World Cup too, Renuka was not a fixture at the start of the tournament but soon India realised the value of her swing bowling and played her in all the games in the business end of the tournament.

She made a crucial contribution in the all-important league game against New Zealand which India needed to win to stay in contention for the knock-outs, with two big wickets of the well set opener Georgia Plimmer who made 30 off 25 balls, and captain Sophie Devine, both clean bowled in a spell of 6-0-25-2.

In this series, the bowler from Himachal Pradesh, was named in the playing XI for the first time. What an inspired change it proved to be!

Renuka didn’t have the right start. Sri Lanka opener Hasini Perera attacked her in the opening over, taking 12 runs including two fours. But in Harmanpreet she has a captain who knows how to use her best. Skipper took her off after the first over, and when she brought her on for the sixth over she changed her end. It proved a masterstroke. Renuka made amends with a double blow for five runs to leave Sri Lanka tottering at 32/3 after six overs.

Captain Harmanpreet had done the same in the World Cup game against New Zealand, it was after a change of ends that Renuka had taken the two big scalps in back to back overs, 10th and 12th.

In Friday’s game, in her third over she claimed the wicket of Nilakshika Silva and then finished brilliantly with a wicket maiden in the 16th over by picking the wicket of the well-set Imesha Dulani.

Earlier, Sri Lanka had a decent start, not losing a wicket for the first four overs. But the wily Deepti, who missed the previous game due to illness, came back and made her presence felt immediately. She provided the initial breakthrough, getting Sri Lanka skipper Chamari Athapaththu’s wicket.

Adapting to different surfaces is the key to her bowling, and the World Cup hero varied her pace during a masterful display of 4-0-18-3.

Except for a 40-run partnership in the middle between Imesha Dulani and Kavisha Dilhari, and a late contribution from Kaushini Nuthyangana, Sri Lanka’s innings never got going. Playing her first match of the series, the 23-year-old Imesha looked like a fine bat and played with confidence on way to a 32-ball 27, but she lacked the support to take the fight to India.