Sri Lankan Women’s team into the final

The 2nd semifinal match of the Asian Games Women’s Cricket Competition between Sri Lanka women’s team and Pakistan women’s team took place at the Zhejiang University of Technology Cricket Field which decided who would be playing India in the women’s final for the gold medal.

Pakistan women scored a modest total of 75 runs for the loss of 9 wickets at the end of their 20 overs with Shawaal Zulfiqar scoring the highest runs for the Pakistani innings with 16 runs to her name and the Pakistan wicketkeeper scoring a useful 13 runs as well. Udeshika Prabodhani was the pick of the bowlers as she managed to get 3 wickets for 21 runs in her allotted 4 overs, although a tad bit expensive Kavisha Dilhari got two important wickets in the two overs she bowled as well. Achini Kulasuriya too kept an exceptional economy rate of 1.75 with just giving away 7 runs in her 4 overs and capturing one wicket as well.

The Sri Lankan women kickstarted their innings as usual with Athapaththu’s fiery shots, as Sri Lanka managed to add up 16 runs at the end of 3 overs. Shortly afterwards, Athapaththu was caught at the deep mid wicket region and Harshitha Samarawickrama came out to bat alongside Anushka Sanjeewani. Sanjeewani too played some beautiful shots to the fence before falling for a well made 15 runs as Sri Lanka put on a total of 33 runs for the loss of 2 wickets at the end of the batting powerplay.

Vishmi Gunaratne was unfortunately caught stumped first ball as she danced down the wicket to flick it towards the leg side, and missed out, to be stumped by Muneeba Ali. Harshitha Samarawickrama along with Nilakshi De Silva steadied the Sri Lankan ship and put on a solid 35 run partnership to steer the Sri Lankan team towards a victory before Samarawickrama was unfortunately run out on 23 runs with Sri Lanka having 6 runs left for victory. 
 
Nilakshi De Silva finished the game in style with a six, with 18 runs to her name, to seal the victory for Sri Lanka.