Asian Games Women's Cricket: Pakistan and Bangladesh to contest for bronze medal
Cricket
Pakistan and Bangladesh will battle it out for the bronze medal in the Asian Games Women's Cricket.
HANGZHOU (Dunya News) - The losing semi-finalists, Pakistan and Bangladesh will battle it out for the bronze medal in the Asian Games Women's Cricket Competition in Hangzhou, China today (Monday).
In the semi-finals, played on Sunday, India women eased past the Bangladesh challenge, while in the second, Sri Lanka women dominated Pakistan and won the match by six wickets.
Sri Lankan captain Chamari Athapaththu won the toss and chose to field against Pakistan. Carrying the spirit of their recent T20I triumph against England, Sri Lanka dominated the proceedings with the ball. A 19-run stand between Shawaal Zulfiqar (16) and Omaima Sohail (10) was the best that Pakistan could muster in their batting effort.
Regular strikes from Udeshika Prabodhani (3/21), Kavisha Dilhari (2/15), Achini Kulasuriya (1/7) and others meant that Pakistan were restricted to 75/9.
On the other hand, Sri Lanka got off to a decent start with Chamari Athapaththu using sweep shots to negate the spinners' turn. After scoring two boundaries, she mistimed a slog sweep to hole out on 14 off 19 balls. Opener Anushka Sanjeewani also fell inside the powerplay for a 13-ball 15 but Harshitha Samarawickrama at one-drop stitched a 35-run stand in 51 deliveries with Nilakshi de Silva for the third wicket to ensure Sri Lanka didn't lose wickets in a flurry. Samarawickrama, despite consuming 41 balls, played a crucial knock of 23 while de Silva's unbeaten 18 saw Sri Lanka chasing down the target with 21 balls to spare and six wickets in hand.
Sadia Iqbal, Daina Baig and Umm-e-Hani were among the wickets for Pakistan, but it wasn't enough to stop Sri Lanka from advancing to the final.
Women's cricket has featured in the Asian Games on two occasions before. In 2010, Pakistan won the Gold medal by beating Bangladesh by 10 wickets. In 2014, they repeated the feat against the same opponents, though by a margin of just four runs.
