India captain Harmanpreet Kaur heaped praise on her team after winning the eighth Women’s Asia Cup title by beating Sri Lanka in the 2026 final by 72 runs at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium in Dubai on Sunday.
Kaur called her team a great one and emphasised that they played to their standards to lift the continental showpiece yet again. And we are very happy with the way we all performed. “I think Shafali had a very, you know, great tournament, and it’s good to see somebody like Shafali taking responsibility and doing the job with bat and ball. And I mean, I can’t ask anything else from them. The Indian bowlers backed things pretty well as Shree Charani picked up four wickets, while Deepti Sharma also scalped three wickets to take the Women in Blue home.
Because we know how much potential we have, and we have a great team, “We feel this way. Because that’s what we discussed when we came here: we have certain standards, and we have to, you know, keep matching them every day, “I think we played to our standards. And I think the girls have done fabulously well throughout the entire tournament, setting 184 in a final,” Kaur said after the win. She heaped praise on the openers Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana, who put up a record 129-run partnership for the opening wicket and laid the platform to take the Women in Blue to 183/5 in 20 overs. The 129-run stand is now the highest in the Women’s T20 Asia Cup for any wicket. Shafali smashed 68 from 39 balls and also hit the fastest half-century in the history of the tournament, when she raised her bat for the milestone off just 24 deliveries.
It’s all about, you know, playing good cricket, and at the end of the day, I’m very happy overall,” she said.
