Nine Sixes and a Piece of History: Shafali Verma Puts India Women Into the Asian Games Final

Shafali Verma has been an international cricketer since she was fifteen. She has opened in World Cup finals, been dropped, been recalled, been analysed to the last frame of her backlift. In all of it — seven years of it — she had never scored a hundred for India.

On Sunday morning at Nisshin, in a semi-final India were expected to win comfortably and did, she made 100 not out from 49 balls. It was the first century ever scored in Asian Games women's cricket and it was her first in international cricket of any kind, which is a sentence that should not be possible about a batter of her reputation. Nine of those runs came in ones. Fifty-four came in sixes.

The powerplay was a two-handed assault. Smriti Mandhana made 37 from 19 with five fours and two sixes and was caught in the sixth over with the opening stand worth 72 from 36 balls. India were ahead of any total this tournament had seen, and then the innings had to be held together rather than extended: Gunalan Kamalini made 3 from 10 and India were 85 for 2 in the ninth.

What Shafali did next was the part of the innings that will get less attention and deserves more. For five overs she took singles against Rabeya Khan and Sanjida Akter Meghla, and let Harmanpreet Kaur — six fours in a 33-ball 40 — do the scoring at the other end. Their third-wicket stand was worth 94 from 55 balls. Only when Harmanpreet was stumped in the eighteenth over did Shafali open up again, and the last two overs of the innings brought her from the eighties to three figures. She was unbeaten on 100 when the twentieth over ended.

A target of 196 was not a chase so much as a sentence, and Bangladesh were facing it having not batted at all in this tournament — their quarter-final against China Women was abandoned without a ball bowled. They lost Juairiya Ferdous in the second over and Sobhana Mostary in the third, and from 9 for 2 the required rate was already out of reach.

Dilara Akter at least refused to go quietly — 27 from 23 with four fours and a six, taking on Kranti Gaud early and clearing the ropes off Shreyanka Patil — but she was the fifth wicket to fall, at 49 in the tenth over, and after that the innings folded rather than resisted. Nandani Sharma finished with 3 for 25 and Deepti Sharma took three wickets for seven runs in 2.4 overs to end it. Shree Charani's three overs cost seven. Bangladesh were bowled out for 81 with 26 balls of their innings unused.

The margin should not obscure the circumstances. Bangladesh walked into a semi-final cold, against the best batting side in the competition, and their bowlers — Sanjida Akter Meghla (4-0-25-1) and Rabeya Khan (4-0-35-1) in particular — kept their heads on a morning when India were hitting the ball into the next postcode. Bangladesh used six bowlers and four of them took a wicket. This was not the day to judge that attack, and a bronze-medal match on Tuesday gives them a fairer one.

Nine sixes in a T20 international innings is a number that carries its own argument. What made Shafali's the innings of the tournament, though, was the choice of targets. She did not slog across the line. She hit straight and over midwicket against the seamers, waited for the spinners to drag their length back, and used the straight boundaries at Korogi Sports Park the way a batter does when she has worked out exactly where they are.

She finished on 100 not out at a strike rate of 204, and the innings had three distinct phases inside 49 balls: an assault, a pause, and a finish. That is not what Shafali Verma has historically been accused of being able to do. It is why this hundred, whenever the second one arrives, will be the one people remember.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview, and we should own that: in our review of India's quarter-final win over Japan we said we would have full analysis for the semi-final against Bangladesh, and we didn't publish one. On the cricket, the one observation we made in that piece stands — India's batting had not been tested at this tournament. It still hasn't. Two matches, two wins, by eight wickets and 114 runs, and 25 overs of batting in total. The final will be the first genuine examination.

India, the defending champions, play the gold-medal match on September 22 at the same ground, against a Sri Lanka side that chased down 178 against Pakistan in the first semi-final with thirteen balls to spare. That is a considerably harder assignment than this one: Sri Lanka have Chamari Athapaththu, who made 83 not out from 50 balls on Sunday, and a top order that has actually had to win a chase this week.

Bangladesh and Pakistan meet in the bronze-medal play-off on the same morning. Pakistan will arrive having played two matches to Bangladesh's one, and having just watched Sri Lanka chase down 178 against them with thirteen balls to spare. For India, the question is the one nobody has yet asked them: what happens when the opposition makes 180?