Indian women beat Pakistan to win 6th straight Asia Cup
Continuing their dominance in the Asia Cup, Indian women captured a 6th straight title beating Pakistan in the ACC Women's T20 Asia Cup final. Star opener Mithali Raj's brilliant innings set up the win. Raj scored an unbeaten 73, as India put up a total of 121/5, for Pakistan to chase. Pakistan were well restricted to 104/6 by the bowlers, enabling the 17-run victory.
ACC Women's Asia Cup
The Asian Cricket Council (ACC) Women's Asia Cup was first played in 2004. It was subsequently played in 2005-06, 2006-07, 2008, and 2012. The first four editions until 2008 were contested in a 50-over format. Since the last edition in 2012, the tournament has been held in T20 format. India was the winner of all the Women's Asia Cup tournaments.
Asia Cup to promote women's cricket in Asia
Asia Cup was started with the aim of providing the Associate nations a structure to play in. The decision to hold the tournament outside main Asian nations was taken to promote women's cricket across Asia. Accordingly, the 2012 edition was held in Guangzhou, China.
The 2016 Asia Cup
The 2016 Women's Asia Cup, the 6th edition of the tournament, was held in Bangkok, Thailand from 26 Nov-4 Dec. It was contested by six teams - India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and two associate nations - Nepal and hosts Thailand, which qualified through ICC Asia WC Qualifier. The tournament involved a round robin format where each team played with every other team once.
India and Pakistan qualify for finals
By winning all their matches in the round robin league, India stood at top of the points table and automatically qualified for the Asia Women's Cup final. Pakistan team came second by winning 4 of the possible 5 matches. Their only loss was to India during the round robin matches. Between the associate nations, Nepal lost all their matches and Thailand won one match.
Indian squad players
Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, Ekta Bisht, Jhulan Goswami, Mansi Joshi, Veda Krishnamurthy, Smriti Mandhana, Sabbhineni Meghana, Shikha Pandey, Anuja Patil, Poonam Yadav, Nuzhat Parween, Preeti Bose, Mithali Raj, Vellaswamy Vanitha, Sushma Verma formed the Indian team.
