IND Women vs UAE Women, 8th Match at Sylhet, Asia Cup, Oct 04 2022 - Ball by Ball Commentary

India's next assignment in this tournament is against Pakistan on Friday, in what is a top-of-the-table clash. But until then, on behalf of my co-commentator S Sudarshanan and our scorerss Ranjith P and K Vairavan, this is Aaditya Narayan signing off. Goodbye.

Jemimah Rodrigues, Player of the Match: I'm batting well, I'm timing the ball really well. So I just want to go and bat well for the team. I know that the longer I bat, the more partnerships I build like the one with Deepti today, it will help the team. I wanted to pick up momentum after the three early wickets, I told Deepti as well that we needed to build momentum. It took some time, but I am batting well, and I wanted to continue that for the team.

Smriti Mandhana, India Captain: Credit to them, they bowled really well in the powerplay to restrict. Jemi and Deepti batted brilliantly for their 100-run partnership to get us back in the game. They (UAE) batted well, there was one dropped catch, but they batted really well to not give their wickets away. We had plans for our bowlers to get some practice, and are happy with what we managed. We wanted all our batters to have a hit, Pooja [Vastrakar] and KP [Navgire] finished off well too. So, good signs us for us ahead of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Chaya Mughal, UAE Captain: The way we started bowling, the first ten overs were really good. A lot of positives we will take forward from here. We're noting the areas we need improvement on, and we will work on them. When you have a good start, you need to continue with that momentum. The first ten overs were really good, but they're Team India, they know how to come back strongly. We are also learning from them. We've got good openers, unfortunately they didn't work today, but our middle order proved themselves today, and hopefully in the coming matches, we will see more performances.

4:45pm: A rather uneventful second innings, but India take the win they wanted and also get themselves a big boost to their net run-rate. Having been set 179 to win, the UAE lost three wickets in the first two overs, but then Khushi Sharma and Kavisha Egodage fought well and stemmed the flow of wickets, even if they couldn't quite get going in terms of the scoring rate. Earlier, the UAE bowlers dared to dream after reducing India to 20/3 in 5 overs, but Jemimah Rodrigues played another superb knock to finish unbeaten on 75, and she was ably supported by Deepti Sharma's 64 as well.

Last over coming up, Hemalatha will bowl it

Deepti comes into the attack

The skipper Chaya Mughal comes to the crease now

A lot of comments coming in questioning the intent of these two batters. Let's not forget that they're still incredibly inexperienced at this level, and the Indian bowlers have barely given anyhing away