Shafali Verma lived a charmed life for her stroke filled 64 off 40 balls as India marched into yet another Women’s Asia Cup final with a comfortable 40-run win over Bangladesh in Dubai on Thursday. On a slow surface where batting was a struggle for majority of the batters, Shafali stood out with her fluent effort to take India to 149 for five. Considering the conditions and India’s bowling resources, the seven-time champions were expected to defend the target and they did rather comfortably, limiting Bangladesh to 109 for 7 in 20 overs.
The Indian opener was dropped as many as three times and she duly made Bangladesh pay for those mistakes.
The Indian spin trio of Deepti Sharma (3/26), Shree Charani (1/14) and Prema Rawat (1/21) too delivered in spin friendly conditions. With seven titles (four in 50-over and three T20s), India are the most successful team in the tournament. It has been a low scoring tournament mainly due to the slow nature of the pitches here.
Like the last game, Pratika Rawal dropped a couple of catches. Considering that and Bangaldesh’s batting, India deep down and knew they had got enough on the board. They play either Pakistan or Sri Lanka in the final scheduled for Sunday. They had a suffered a shocking loss to Sri Lanka in the previous edition.
Earlier, the Bangladesh bowling attack, which has been impressive in the tournament, was able to keep the accomplished Indian batters quiet for majority of the innings.
