India once again refused to accept a tournament trophy from Asian Cricket Council Chairman Mohsin Naqvi on Sunday, this time by their women’s team throwing the closing ceremony into uncertainty and delay.
The trophy presentation at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium was delayed by more than half an hour after India completed a dominant 72-run victory over Sri Lanka in the final, Hindustan Times reported.
ESPNCricinfo also reported that the presentation ceremony wrapped up “without the Indian team collecting their winners’ medals or the trophy”. Live visuals from the stadium confirmed the same.
However, Sri Lanka’s Chamari Athapaththu picked up the runners-up cheque from Naqvi, the outlet added.
The final ball of the match was done by 9:55pm UAE time (10:55pm PKT), and by 10:30pm (11:30pm PKT), there were “no signs of the presentation ceremony starting”, Hindustan Times noted.
The outlet pointed out that broadcasters interviewed Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur “immediately”, even though the interview is usually kept for the end of the presentation ceremony.
The finale
Shree Charani’s fantastic four-wicket haul helped India crush Sri Lanka by 72 runs to lift the Asia Cup title for the eighth time.
Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma both towered the innings with 59 and 68 runs, respectively, as the Indian team managed to post 185 runs on the board in the allotted 20 overs with five wickets to spare.
Charani, outracing Deepti Sharma, who grabbed three wickets, dismantled the Sri Lankan lineup, with only Athapaththu, Vishmi Gunaratne, and Nilakshi de Silva entering the double figures.
Athapaththu, after scoring 36 off 32 balls, emerged as the top run-getter for outclassed Sri Lanka.
“This is the part of the game: one team wins, one team loses. But at the end of the day, we did not play our best game in all three departments. They played very well. But we will bounce back. Asian Games is coming up.
“And we will bounce back. We played really good cricket throughout the tournament, but today we struggled a little bit,” she said in a post-match talk.
Indian captain Harmenpreet Kaur maintained that her team played to its standard.
“We know they are a great team. But we played to our standards. We set high standards for ourselves, and we wanted to keep matching them.
“Very happy with the way we all performed. The openers did a great job for us. The way Shafali and Smriti bat like they did. Great to see someone like Shafali take responsibility through the tournament with the bat and ball.“
More to follow
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