Seven titles is not a record you defend casually. It is also not a record that offers you any protection when you lose your best middle-order problem-solver a week before the tournament begins.
India travel to Dubai as comfortably the most successful side in the history of the Women’s Asia Cup, and they do so without Jemimah Rodrigues, ruled out by a high-grade hamstring tear picked up during The Hundred. Harmanpreet Kaur captains the fifteen, with Smriti Mandhana named as her deputy.
The squad in full
Harmanpreet Kaur (captain), Smriti Mandhana (vice-captain), Shafali Verma, Bharti Fulmali, Pratika Rawal, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh (wicketkeeper), Gunalan Kamalini (wicketkeeper), Arundhati Reddy, Prema Rawat, Radha Yadav, Sree Charani, Renuka Singh Thakur, Nandni Sharma and Kranti Gaud.
The batting looks deep on paper, and it genuinely is. Mandhana, Shafali, Pratika Rawal and Bharti Fulmali give India real options at the top of the order, and Deepti Sharma continues to supply the all-round balance she has provided for the better part of a decade now. The decision to carry two wicketkeepers in Richa Ghosh and Gunalan Kamalini reads as flexibility rather than indecision, particularly in a tournament where India may want to shuffle the middle order between matches.
The Rodrigues absence
The gap she leaves behind is a specific one rather than a general one, and that is what makes it awkward to fill.
Rodrigues has become the player India turn to when a chase has stalled on a slow surface and the required rate has started climbing. She is the rebuilder, the batter who finds a boundary at the moment the innings has stopped producing them, and who can bat through a difficult period without either panicking or shutting down entirely.
Dubai in early September, on pitches that will have been used repeatedly by then, is precisely the situation that calls for exactly that skill set. India have more than enough batting to cover the runs Rodrigues would have scored. Covering the role she plays is a rather different question, and the answer will most likely be Harmanpreet herself, batting slightly higher and slightly longer than she might otherwise have planned.
The bowling question
Renuka Thakur leads a seam group made up of Arundhati Reddy, Kranti Gaud and Nandani Sharma, while the spin department falls to Radha Yadav, Sree Charani and Prema Rawat.
Every single match in this tournament is being played at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, on the same square, across seventeen days. That is a significant detail. Surfaces will slow down noticeably as the competition progresses, and by the semi-final stage the pitches will be considerably more tired than they were in the opening week.
The side whose spinners hold their nerve through the middle overs will in all likelihood lift the trophy. India’s spin group is talented, but it is also young, and Dubai in September is an unforgiving place to learn.
The fixtures
India are in Group A alongside Pakistan, Thailand and Hong Kong China. Every match starts at 8:00 PM Indian time.
- 30 August, India vs Thailand
- 3 September, India vs Hong Kong China
- 5 September, India vs Pakistan
- 10 and 11 September, Semi-finals
- 13 September, Final
Group B contains defending champions Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, hosts UAE and tournament debutants Indonesia.
The fixture that needs no introduction
The 5 September meeting with Pakistan will draw an audience regardless of what the group table happens to look like by then, and everybody involved knows it.
Given the state of cricketing relations across the region over the past eighteen months, this is not simply another group match. The men’s Asia Cup produced three India versus Pakistan fixtures in which the Indian side declined to shake hands, and it ended with India refusing to accept the trophy from the ACC president. That trophy is still sitting at ACC headquarters in Dubai, unclaimed, months later.
None of that is the women’s team’s doing, and none of it is their responsibility to resolve. But it is the context they will be playing in, in the same city where the trophy remains in limbo, and it will make an ordinary group fixture feel like something considerably heavier.
What comes next
On paper India should reach the final. Seven titles, the strongest batting group in the competition by a reasonable distance, and a draw that offers two comfortable fixtures before the Pakistan match.
The caution is worth stating plainly, though. Sri Lanka are the reigning champions, and they got there by beating India in the last edition. Dubai rewards patient, disciplined spin bowling far more than it rewards power hitting, which does not entirely suit the way India’s batting is currently constructed. And Rodrigues’s absence has removed the one player best equipped for exactly the conditions India are walking into.
Sony Sports Network carries the tournament in India, with one match a day throughout the seventeen days. It begins on 28 August with Thailand against Hong Kong China, and India’s campaign starts forty-eight hours later.