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DY Patil Stadium: Shafali Verma struck her first half-century in three years in ODIs while Deepti Sharma bagged her third of this Women's World Cup as India posted 298/7 in their 50 overs against South Africa in the final at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Sunday.

Shafali, at 21 years, the youngest to score a fifty in the World Cup final, struck a superb 87 coming into the ODI team after a year and raised a century partnership with Smriti Mandhana (45). South Africa pulled things back in the middle overs, but Deepti Sharma scored her third half-century of this World Cup to prop up the innings. She and Richa Ghosh added 47 runs for the sixth wicket to help India push closer to the 300-run mark. With a little better execution, they could have taken the team past 300.

Asked to bat first, India got off to a superb start with the old-firm partnership of Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana raising 100 runs for the opening wicket, in the process completing 1000 runs of their partnership as openers. They are the fourth Indian pair to do so.