Asian Games 2023: India women’s cricket team bags gold

Indian women’s cricket team defeated Sri Lanka by 19 runs in the final at Pingfeng Campus Cricket Field, Hangzhou to clinch the gold medal. This is the first-ever gold for India in cricket at the Asian Games.

India women’s won the toss and batting first, India scored 116/7. Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues led the way for India and scored 46 off 45 deliveries and 42 off 40 balls respectively on a challenging track to help the team to post a respectable total. Only two batters from the Indian side managed to score in double digits. However, Mandhana fell short of completing her 23rd T20I half-century.

𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 🥇 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐀🇮🇳#TeamIndia beat Sri Lanka by 19 runs in the #AsianGames 2022 FINAL 🏏#Cheer4India #IndiaAtAG22 #INDvSL pic.twitter.com/sOmzIWEUQR

— Doordarshan Sports (@ddsportschannel) September 25, 2023

In reply, Sri Lanka was bundled out on 97/8 in 20 overs. For the Sri Lankans, Hasini Perera scored 25 from 22 deliveries, Nilakshi de Silva scored 23 from 34 deliveries and Oshadi Ranasinghe scored 19 runs from 26 deliveries were among the batters who showed a fight to achieve the target but didn’t get the requisite support at the lower end batters to chase things down.

Many congratulations to our Women’s Cricket team on winning the #GoldMedal after a wonderful performance against Sri Lanka in the finals.

Let’s #Cheer4india 🇮🇳 #WeAreTeamIndia | #IndiaAtAG22 pic.twitter.com/owho0FZqT7

— Team India (@WeAreTeamIndia) September 25, 2023

Mandhana led the team as Harmanpreet Kaur, the regular captain, was handed a two-match ban for her outburst after an ODI game against Bangladesh.

The moment India became the Gold medalists of the #AsianGames Women’s T20I competition 🙌 pic.twitter.com/Sn8v4XgLFN

— ICC (@ICC) September 25, 2023

Current standings in medal tally

With this win, India secured its second gold medal of the Hangzhou Asian Games after the Men’s 10m Air Rifle team managed to create a world record and propelled the country’s medal tally to 11.

India is appearing in the cricket event for the first time at the Asian Games. In the two previous editions, India didn’t send its contingent. In the 2010 and 2014 editions of the Asian Games, Pakistan won the gold medal.