New Delhi. India’s spectacular victory has given Pakistan a ticket to the semi-finals in the Women’s Asia Cup. The Indian women’s team defeated Nepal by 82 runs on Tuesday. As soon as Nepal lost, Pakistan’s semi-final play was also confirmed. India had already made it to the top-4 one match earlier. The semi-final matches will be played on 26 July.
Openers Shefali Verma and D Hemalatha laid the foundation of India’s victory over Nepal. Shefali and Hemalatha shared a wonderful partnership of 122 runs in 14 overs. This partnership was broken when Hemalatha (47) was out. She scored 47 runs in 42 balls. Hemalatha came to open the innings in place of Smriti Mandhana, who is captaining the team in this match. Harmanpreet Kaur and Pooja Vastrakar were given rest in this match.
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D. Hemalatha may have missed the half-century, but Shefali Verma made no mistake in crossing the 50-run mark. The way she was playing, it seemed that she would score a century. As she came close to the century, she made a mistake. Shefali was stumped out in the 16th over while trying to hit Sita Rana Magar’s ball by moving forward. Before getting out, she scored 81 runs in 48 balls with the help of 12 fours and a six. This is the best score of her T20 International career.
Beautiful innings by Jemimah
After the dismissal of Shefali Verma and D Hemalatha, Jemimah Rodrigues, Sajeevan Sajana and Richa Ghosh played short but excellent innings to take the score to 178 for 3 wickets. Jemimah scored 28 runs in 15 balls. Sajeevan was out after scoring 10 runs in 12 balls. Richa Ghosh played an unbeaten innings of 6 runs.
Nepal could not even score 100 runs
Nepal’s team, which came out to chase the target of 179 runs, never looked like moving towards victory. Not a single batsman from their side could touch the score of 20 runs. The entire Nepal team could score only 96 runs for 9 wickets in the stipulated 20 overs. From India’s side, Deepti Sharma took the maximum of 3 wickets. Arundhati Reddy and Radha Yadav took 2-2 wickets each.
India’s third consecutive win
This is India’s third consecutive win in the Women’s Asia Cup. The Indian team finished first in Group A with three wins. Pakistan got the direct benefit of India’s win. The Pakistani team won two matches. If Nepal’s team had defeated India by a big margin, Pakistan would have been out of the race for the semi-finals. This is the reason why its fans kept praying for India’s victory against Nepal. Nepal won one match in the tournament. The fourth team of the group, UAE’s win tally remained zero.
FIRST PUBLISHED : July 23, 2024, 21:59 IST