The Women’s Asia Cup is on, and India want back what they used to own

The Women’s T20 Asia Cup began at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on 28 August and runs to the final on 13 September. Eight teams, two groups, and for India a straightforward brief: win back a trophy that was theirs for most of the competition’s history until two years ago.

The groups

Group A	Group B
India	Sri Lanka (holders)
Pakistan	Bangladesh
Thailand	United Arab Emirates (hosts)
Hong Kong, China	Indonesia (debutants)

Top two from each group go through. Semi-finals are on 10 and 11 September, the final on 13 September.

Note what that structure does: with four teams in a group and two qualifying, a side can lose once and still reach the semi-finals. That is a meaningfully gentler format than the knockout India face at the Asian Games later this month, and it is the reason a group-stage upset is survivable here in a way it will not be there.

India’s three group matches

Date	Opponent
30 August	Thailand
3 September	Hong Kong, China
5 September	Pakistan

The opener is less routine than the ranking gap suggests. Thailand won the tournament’s first match on 28 August, beating Hong Kong by six runs — 120 for 9 played 114 for 7. That is a side arriving with a win and a settled XI against one that has not played yet, in a format where twenty overs is not long enough for a ranking to assert itself.

What happened in 2024

India went into the last final having dominated the competition for two decades. Sri Lanka had reached five finals and lost all five, every one of them to India.

They won the sixth. At Dambulla on 28 July 2024, India posted 165 for 6, with Smriti Mandhana making 60 from 47 balls. Sri Lanka chased it down in 18.4 overs for the loss of two wickets, Harshitha Madavi finishing unbeaten on 69 and Chamari Athapaththu making 61.

2024 final, Dambulla
India	165/6 (20 overs)
Sri Lanka	167/2 (18.4 overs)
Result	Sri Lanka won by 8 wickets — their first Asia Cup

Eight wickets and eight balls to spare is not a narrow defeat. It was the first time the competition had produced a champion other than India or Bangladesh, and it is the reason this edition is a title chase rather than a title defence.

The squad, and a detail worth noticing

Harmanpreet Kaur captains a 15-player squad with Smriti Mandhana as vice-captain: Shafali Verma, Bharti Fulmali, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh, G Kamalini, Arundhati Reddy, Prema Rawat, Radha Yadav, Sree Charani, Renuka Thakur, Nandni Sharma, Kranti Gaud and Pratika Rawal complete it.

Compare that with the 15 named for the Asian Games and thirteen names are common to both. The Asia Cup squad carries Prema Rawat and Pratika Rawal; the Asian Games squad instead lists Jemimah Rodrigues and Shreyanka Patil, the latter subject to fitness.

That overlap matters because of the calendar. The Asia Cup final is on 13 September. The Asian Games cricket tournament starts on 17 September, in Japan, as a straight knockout. Four days separate a possible final in Dubai from a quarter-final India cannot afford to lose — and India will be playing the second of those with substantially the same players who finished the first.

What to watch

• The Pakistan match on 5 September. It will draw the audience regardless of the table, but it is also the fixture most likely to decide which of the two tops Group A and therefore who each avoids in the semi-final.
• Whether Sri Lanka come through Group B. A rematch of the 2024 final would need both to reach 13 September, and the holders are in the group with the hosts and Bangladesh.
• How hard India push in a dead rubber. With two qualifying from four, the third group match may not matter to qualification — and four days later there is a knockout in Japan where fresh legs are worth more than a better net run rate.

Indonesia are here for the first time. That is the quieter story of the week, and worth a moment: an Asia Cup that has been the same handful of teams for twenty years is not one any more.