India Meet Sri Lanka in the Women's Asia Cup Final
The final is in Dubai at 8pm IST. It is a rematch of the last one: Sri Lanka are the defending champions, and the side they beat to win their first title was India.
The Women's Asia Cup final is played at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium today, with India against Sri Lanka and a scheduled start of 8pm IST.
How the two sides arrived
India beat Bangladesh by 40 runs in the first semi final on 10 September, with Shafali Verma and Deepti Sharma doing most of the damage. It was a controlled performance rather than a dramatic one, which has been the shape of their tournament.
Sri Lanka's route was harder. They beat Pakistan by four wickets in the second semi final on 11 September, holding off a Pakistan side captained by Fatima Sana who made them earn the last few runs.
What is at stake
This is India's sixth final in the T20 edition of this tournament, and Harmanpreet Kaur leads a side that has won the competition seven times across its formats. But India are not the holders, and that is the point of tonight.
Sri Lanka are the defending champions. They won their first Women's Asia Cup in 2024, and the side they beat in that final was India. Tonight is a rematch of it.
India's record here is dominant rather than perfect. They won the first six editions, then lost the 2018 final to Bangladesh, won again in 2022, and lost to Sri Lanka in 2024. Three countries have now won this tournament, which was not true a decade ago and says more about the growth of the women's game in the region than any single result does.
The case for Sri Lanka
They have beaten India in a final already, and the semi final showed the thing that makes them dangerous in a one off match: they defend a moderate total better than most sides in the region, because their spinners are accurate rather than expensive and they do not concede the game in a single over.
A final is also the one match where the gap in depth between two sides matters least. Twenty overs is not long enough for the better team to be reliably the winning team, which is why finals are worth watching and why predicting them is a poor business.
What follows
For India, the calendar does not pause. The Asian Games women's cricket tournament begins in Japan on 17 September, and India go into it as defending champions from Hangzhou.