SYLHET: India beat Sri Lanka by 8 wickets with 69 balls remaining to be crowned for the 7th time as Asia Cup champions in the Women’s Asia Cup Final held at Sylhet, Bangladesh. Sri Lankan women who entered the final after beating Pakistan in a nail-biting finish, had to be content with the Runners up title after a stunning performance by the Indian women.
Renuka Singh was named the player of the match for her 3 wickets for 5 runs. Sri Lanka were curtailed for just 69 runs for 9 wickets off 20 overs. India chased down the total in just 8.3 overs for the loss of 2 wickets with Smriti Mandhana hitting a quick fire 51 runs off 25 balls (India 71 for 2 wickets in 8.3 overs).
Deepti Sharma was named the player of the series for total of 13 wickets and 94 runs in the series.
Chamari Athapaththu, the Sri Lankan captain shared her disappointment on the performance but was hopeful that it would be a learning experience. “Tough day as a team. Not a good batting display in the finals. Really upset today. The next year we have the T20 World Cup and we have learnt a lot in this tournament. I am happy with my bowling unit. We have couple of young players and I hope they do well as a batting unit. We don’t have a lot of experienced players but I hope the young players do well in the future” said Athapaththu.
The winning Indian Captain Harmanpreet Kaur gave credit to her bowling unit after Sri Lanka were bundled off for just 69 runs. “We should credit our bowlers. Our fielding unit was good from ball one and we discussed that we should not give away easy runs. You have to read the wicket and accordingly place the fielders in right positions. We read the wicket well and positions fielders accordingly. We were not looking at the scoreboard but only decided our five-over targets. We never thought about what the total on the board is and batted accordingly” said the Indian Captain.
Scores at a glance.
SL WOMEN – 65/9(20 Overs)
Inoka Ranaweera * 18 (22) Renuka Singh 3/5 (3)
Oshadi Ranasinghe 13 (20) Sneh Rana 2/13 (4)
IND WOMEN • 71/2(8.3 Overs)
Smriti Mandhana *51 (25) Inoka Ranaweera 1/17 (3)
Harmanpreet Kaur *11 (14) Kavisha Dilhari 1/17 (2) Image credit – ESPN Cric info (RZ)
