India were sent out to bat by Hong Kong China on Thursday in the Asia Cup, just 2 days ahead of their high profile encounter against Pakistan on Saturday.
India, who are 7-time Asia Cup champions with 3 coming in the T20I format, will hope that their batting performance does not leave a lot to be desired.
In the match against Thailand, India were cruising at 101/2 in 10 overs before suffering a dramatic collapse, losing 7 wickets for just 29 runs, ultimately sputtering to 159 runs. The bowlers, however, came to the party as the Women in Blue wiped out the opposition for just 65 runs with Nandni Sharma and Deepti Sharma taking 3 wickets each.
The only bright spark in India’s batting was Shafali Verma who scored 64 while the other big guns like Smriti Mandhana, Pratika Rawal, Harmanpreet Kaur and Richa Ghosh all fell cheaply. With the absence of Jemimah Rodrigues, the Indian top order looks to be a bit shaky and they’ll look to gain some confidence with big scores against a relatively weak opponent in Hong Kong China.