India women registered a thumping victory over United Arab Emirates (UAE) women in match 5 of the Women's T20 Asia Cup 2024 played at Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium on Sunday. (As It Happened | Scorecard)
The Harmanpreet Kaur-led India women are most likely into the semifinals of the ongoing tournament after winning both of their matches so far. They are yet to play a group-stage match against Nepal on Tuesday.
Women In Blue were asked to bat first after UAE won the toss and decided to bowl first in a must-win game. Shafali Verma displayed a flurry of boundaries but India lost three early wickets inside the powerplay.
Indian skipper Kaur kept batting at one end and was successful in finding the gaps in between. Jemimah Rodrigues (14 off 13 balls) looked to struggle and was unable to hit a single boundary.
Richa Ghosh joined after her dismissal in the 12th over and accelerated the run speed. Kaur and Ghosh added 75 runs off 45 balls for the fifth wicket.
Ghosh completed her fifty in the last over and managed to extract 20 off the last five deliveries of the Indian inning. She played an unbeaten knock of 64 runs off 29 balls including 12 fours and one six in her inning.
Kaur was the leading run-scorer for the Indian side with 66 runs. She took 47 balls and hit seven fours and one six in her calm and composed inning. With the help of their efforts, Indian women also managed to cross the 200-run mark in T20Is for the first time and put their highest score on the board (201/5).
In response, the UAE women's team started slow and lost the wickets of Theertha Satish and Rinitha Rajith inside the powerplay. UAE skipper Esha Rohit Oza kept batting at one end but wickets kept falling from the other side.
Oza made a convincing 38 off 36 balls before she got stumped out on Tanuja Kanwar's delivery. Kavisha Egodage was the highest run-scorer for them with 40 not out off 32 balls.
India women halted them on 123/7 after 20 overs and won the match by 78 runs. With this win, Indian women are almost qualified for the semifinals with one match in hand.
Deepti Sharma grabbed a brace of wickets, whereas Kanwar, Pooja Vastrakar, Renuka Thakur Singh and Radha Yadav took one wicket each. India will face Nepal women in their last Group A match on Tuesday at the same venue.
