Shafali's 26-Ball Fifty, a Collapse India Will Want to Forget, and Deepti's 3 for 0 — India Open the Asia Cup With a 94-Run Win

Thailand won the toss in Dubai and put India in, which on the face of it was an act of either great courage or resignation. For ten overs it looked like resignation. Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma took 38 from the first three overs. India passed fifty in the 25th ball of the innings and a hundred inside ten. Shafali reached her fifty from twenty-six deliveries with six fours and three sixes and gave every impression of being about to make the highest score of the tournament by some distance.

And then India did the thing India have been doing. Eight wickets fell for forty-six runs. Shafali holed out to a return catch. Richa Ghosh was caught first ball. Deepti Sharma was run out. Two more went to Sunida Chaturongrattana, one to Chanida Sutthiruang, and a side that had been 108 for 2 in the twelfth over was 137 for 9 in the eighteenth. Kranti Gaud, batting eleven, hit 15 from 8 to drag the total to 159. Against a stronger opponent that passage decides the match. Against Thailand it merely spoiled the afternoon.

Shafali Verma's cricket has always been an argument about risk, and on nights like this the argument settles itself. She and Smriti Mandhana took 38 from the eighteen balls of the opening stand. When Mandhana was run out for 19 in the third over, Shafali simply carried on with Pratika Rawal, who was playing her first WT20I, and the pair added 53 for the second wicket — fifty of them in 34 balls.

The fifty came from twenty-six balls — six fours, three sixes — and it was not a slog. At the ten-over drinks break she was 59 and India were 101 for 2. She fell for 64 in the thirteenth over, Suleeporn Laomi holding a return catch, and India lost Richa Ghosh to the very next delivery.

Player of the Match, and comfortably. But 64 from 36 in a total of 159 tells its own uncomfortable story about who else contributed.

This is where India need to be honest with themselves. Harmanpreet Kaur went for 5 from 9 to make it 108 for 3 in the twelfth over, and from there the sequence read: Shafali 64 caught and bowled, Richa Ghosh 0 caught first ball, Deepti Sharma 5 run out, Bharti Fulmali 13 caught, Prema Rawat 6 stumped, Nandani Sharma 1 bowled. Six wickets for twenty-nine runs across five and a half overs.

Thailand deserve real credit for it. Laomi finished with 3 for 26 from her four, Chaturongrattana took two in the middle, and Chanida Sutthiruang went at 4.66 an over — the most economical spell of the innings. This was not India throwing it away against nothing; it was a disciplined, slow, well-directed spell of spin from a side ranked far below them, and India had no plan for it beyond hitting harder.

Amol Muzumdar spent the build-up to this tournament describing his side as hungry despite nine defeats in sixteen T20Is. Those defeats have not generally come from a lack of top-order runs. They have come from precisely this — a hundred on the board for two wickets and no idea how to convert it into 180.

Thailand's reply lasted 16.1 overs and produced one innings. Nannapat Koncharoenkai, the wicketkeeper, made 41 from 48 balls with five fours and was the last wicket to fall — which means she watched the other nine go from the other end. The next-highest score in the innings was six.

Kranti Gaud bowled Natthakan Chantham in the first over. Nandani Sharma took three, Shree Charani two, and Thailand were 44 for 6 at the ten-over drinks break. It was already finished. What made it memorable was how Deepti Sharma finished it. She was given the ninth over and took two wickets in it without conceding a run — Naomi Hamilton lbw, Nannaphat Chaihan caught — a wicket-maiden with two in it. She was brought back for the seventeenth over and had Koncharoenkai caught behind with its first ball. Final figures: 1.1-1-0-3.

Three wickets, no runs, seven deliveries of actual bowling. It is a line that will look absurd in the scorebook for years, and it is the clearest possible statement of the gulf between these two sides.

Dubai International Cricket Stadium played the way it has all tournament: true early, and progressively harder to score on as the evening went. India scored 101 in their first ten overs and 58 in their second, and seven of their nine wickets fell to bowlers rather than to run-outs — Laomi three, Chaturongrattana two, Putthawong and Sutthiruang one each.

Thailand's decision to field first was defensible on that reading — chase in the dew, use the harder ball for your seamers — and for ten overs it was simply overwhelmed by Shafali. The surface did not misbehave. Thailand's batting was never equipped to make 160 on any surface against this attack.

This match did not have a CricIntel preview — our editorial coverage of the Women's Asia Cup group stage began with the Sri Lanka and Thailand fixtures — so there is no prediction to hold ourselves to here. What we did write, in our news coverage two days ago, was that Amol Muzumdar's 'hungry' framing was doing a lot of work for a side that had lost nine of sixteen T20Is and was arriving with a T20 World Cup hangover and Jemimah Rodrigues absent. On the evidence of one afternoon: the top order is not the problem, the middle order still is, and a 94-run win over Thailand does not settle either question.

India take two points and a net run rate of considerable size, which in a group format decided on fine margins is worth having. Pratika Rawal's debut — 22 from 18, part of a 53-run stand — was a quietly encouraging first outing. Kranti Gaud's 15 not out from 8 at number eleven is the kind of detail selectors notice.

The real examination comes against Pakistan and, if the group goes to form, in the knockouts. Harmanpreet Kaur has made 5 in her only innings of the tournament and Richa Ghosh a first-ball duck; both will want time in the middle before a match that matters. Thailand, meanwhile, move on to Pakistan on Tuesday. They beat Hong Kong by six runs in the tournament opener with a defence built on conceding nothing, and that remains their template — but 65 against India, with Koncharoenkai making 41 of them, shows how little margin there is when the bowling does not hold.