India’s women retained their Asian Games cricket title in emphatic style on Tuesday, beating Sri Lanka by 147 runs in the gold-medal match at the Kōrogi Sports Park in Nisshin, Japan. The win also gave India their first gold medal of the 2026 Games.
Harmanpreet Kaur chose to bat, and her openers made the most of it. Smriti Mandhana hit 79 off 45 balls and added 66 with Shafali Verma inside the powerplay. Shafali made 48, and Richa Ghosh finished the innings with an unbeaten 49 off 22 balls as India reached 216 for 3.
Spin does the rest
Sri Lanka’s chase never got going. Captain Chamari Athapaththu top-scored with 29, but her side were bowled out for 69 in 15.4 overs, with all ten wickets falling to spin. Deepti Sharma took 3 for 6, while Shafali, Shreyanka Patil and Shree Charani picked up two wickets each.
Back-to-back titles
The final was a repeat of the gold-medal match at the previous Games in Hangzhou, which India won by 19 runs. This time they reached the final by beating hosts Japan in the quarter-finals and Bangladesh in the semi-finals.
Attention now turns to the men’s competition, which begins at the same venue on 24 September.
