IND-W vs MAL-W Women's Asia Cup 2022: The Indian women's team on Monday defeated the Malaysian team in their second match of the ongoing Women's Asia Cup 2022. The Indian eves produced a dominant show against the nascent Malaysian team in the rain-curtailed match. The Indian team won the match by 30 runs on the DLS method to win their second match in the tournament on trot.
India made four changes from its playing XI that featured against Sri Lanka on October 1. Smriti Mandana, Sneh Rana, Pooja Vastrakar and Renuka Thakur were rested. While, Sabbineni Meghana, KP Navgire, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, and Meghna Singh were included in the team.
The women in blue were forced to bat after Malaysian skipper Winifred Duraisingam won the toss. Openers S Meghana and Shafali Verma got India off to a brilliant start with the former notching up a fifty. However, Verma missed her fifty. Richa Ghosh was clinical with the bat and her cameo of 33 off 19 balls helped India post 181 on the board. For Malaysia, Nur Dania Syuhada and captain Winifred Duraisingam picked two wickets each. Syuhada even had a hat-trick chance but she missed that.
Coming out to bat, Malaysia lost early wickets as Harmanpreet Kaur brought spinners looking at the overhead conditions. The Indian captain knew that rain might come and she started with Deepti Sharma and Rajeshwari Gayakwad to get five overs quickly for the result to come.
"We knew the rain might come, so we wanted to get the five overs in quickly. Hence we started with two spinners. I think Meghana and Shafali batted really well, and Richa was also very expressive in the end. She gave us runs no matter what the wicket is like. (On Shafali) When she was going through a bad patch, we wanted her to stay at the wicket for a long and get that confidence back. Especially before bigger games," Harmanpreet Kaur said after the match.
The rain intervened when Malaysia was at 16/2 in 5.2 overs and the match could not start later. According to the DLS method, India won by 30 runs. The women in blue will next face UAE in their third match on October 4.
