Pratika Rawal says the batting order was never discussed, and India go for a 3-0 sweep of Zimbabwe in Vadodara
India have won all five games of Zimbabwe’s tour so far, and Smriti Mandhana is still waiting for a big score of her own.
Oct 28, 2026
India’s women have one game left against Zimbabwe, and it starts at 2pm IST at the Kotambi Stadium in Vadodara today. The series is already won. India took the first ODI by nine wickets and the second by 121 runs, and a third win would finish the tour six from six, after the 3-0 sweep of the T20Is in Raipur.
That makes this a dead rubber in name only. The series is part of the ICC Women’s Championship, so a win in Vadodara is worth exactly as many points as the one that clinched it on Sunday.
Rawal on the batting order
Before the series began there was talk that Shafali Verma would open with Smriti Mandhana and Pratika Rawal would drop to No. 3. It never happened. Rawal has opened, Shafali has batted at three, and Rawal says the subject never came up.
“Honestly, there were no conversations inside the dressing room about the batting order,” she told reporters after practice on Tuesday. “Me and Smriti knew that we were going in as openers.”
It is hard to argue with the results. Rawal made 100 not out in the first game and 61 in the second, 161 runs for once out. She put some of that down to long sessions in the nets, since India’s last ODIs before this series were on the tour of Australia in late February and early March. “When you bat for longer duration in nets, you get that sense of confidence,” she said.
Mandhana needs a score
The captain is the one batter who has not had a proper innings. Mandhana made 32 in the opener and was caught for a duck off the fourth ball of the second game, when India slipped to 19 for 2 before Harmanpreet Kaur’s 126 and Deepti Sharma’s 106 not out took them to 328 for 6.
Thirty-two runs in two games is not a crisis for a player of her record, and I doubt anyone in the India camp is losing sleep over it. I would still expect her to want a long innings today, if only so the series does not end with a fourth-ball duck as her last memory of it.
What Zimbabwe can take from it
The tourists have lost both games heavily, though neither was one-way traffic from the start. They were 107 for 2 chasing 329 on Sunday before losing their last eight wickets for 100, and 17-year-old Beloved Biza has been their best batter, with 62 in the first game and 34 in the second. Only England’s Sarah Taylor was younger when she made an ODI fifty against India.
India’s spinners have done most of the damage. N Shree Charani took 4 for 23 in the opener, and Vaishnavi Sharma’s 4 for 39 broke Zimbabwe’s chase on Sunday. Zimbabwe’s best spells with the bat have come in the first 20 overs. Their problem has been the 20 after that.
The forecast is for a hot, dry afternoon with no rain, and the pitch at Kotambi has been good for batting all series. India will expect to finish it 3-0.