Renuka Singh set it up with the ball, while Smriti Mandhana fuelled the run-chase with a blistering fifty to power India to a dominant eight-wicket win over Sri Lanka in the women’s Asia Cup 2022 final on Saturday, October 15.
Perhaps the only joyous moment for Sri Lanka came before a ball was bowled, with skipper Chamari Athapaththu winning the toss and opting to bat. Fresh from a thrilling one-run win over Pakistan in the semi-final on Thursday, Sri Lanka had a rather dismal start, with key batter Athapaththu being runout while going for a misjudged single.
Renuka, who inflicted the run-out, had Harshitha Madavi caught behind in the next over. A mix-up on the very next ball resulted in another runout, with Anushka Sanjeewani falling well short of her crease after uncertainty in calling. Hasini Perera played one straight to Smriti Mandhana at the cover to be dismissed for a golden duck, leaving Sri Lanka at 9/4 with a ball to go in the fourth over.
Renuka delivered a wicket-maiden next, dismissing Kavisha Dilhari for 1 to make it 16/5 at the end of the powerplay. The right-arm quick, having excelled at the Commonwealth Games 2022 and the England white-ball tour earlier this season, rounded off a highly successful new-ball spell of 3-1-5-3.
Spinners Rajeshwari Gayakwad and Sneh Rana dented the opposition further, bagging two wickets each in an innings that was eventually limited to 65/9 in the allotted 20 overs. The score was achieved after the last-wicket pair of Inoka Ranaweera and Achini Kulasuriya added an unbeaten 22 in the last over, the former’s unbeaten 18 off 22 being the highest individual score in the innings.
India lost Shafali Verma and Jemimah Rodrigues rather early in the chase, but the Sri Lankans had no answer to Mandhana’s imperious stroke=play, with the vice-captain saving her best for the final. Mandhana struck six fours and three sixes, including the winning hit over long-on in an unbeaten 51 off 25, helping India achieve the target with 11.3 overs remaining.
Resultantly, India bagged their seventh Women’s Asia Cup title. The only occasion when India missed out from the eight editions played till date was the last one in 2018, wherein they had gone down to Bangladesh by three wickets in a last-ball finish in the final.
Reflecting on the win, skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said:
“We should give credit to the bowlers and the fielding unit was very good today from ball one. We didn’t want to give them easy runs as every ball is important, proud of the way we performed today.
We were not looking at the scoreboard and we were just looking at the short targets we had for ourselves and it all worked out well.”
Renuka was named the Player of the Match, while Deepti, who bagged 13 wickets at 7.69 while maintaining a brilliant economy of 3.33 throughout the competition, was named the Player of the Series.
“I just backed my strengths and those things helped me a lot in this tournament. The wickets were slow and before this tournament, I worked a lot on my batting and those sessions really helped me. This win gives us a lot of confidence going into the upcoming series as well,”
Deepti remarked.
Brief scores
Sri Lanka 65/9 in 20 overs (Renuka 3-5, Rana 2-13, Gayakwad 2-16) lost to India 71/2 in 8.3 overs (Mandhana 51*; Ranaweera 1-17) by eight wickets
