Pakistan's captain Fatima Sana gave an extraordinary display, producing perhaps the lone highlight performance in the 2026 Asia Cup after finishing 3 for 17 but her efforts were all in vain. Her fierce burst of bowling offered some resistance but she had been hobbled by a dire showing from Pakistan's batting line-up which fell to a Women Asia Cup record of 55 all-out.
With only 56 runs required for victory, the Indians were well on track for an easy win thanks to Shafali Verma, who clobbered the very first ball of the inning for a big six over extra-cover. The Pakistan pace bowler however had other plans. Opening the attack herself, she found two scalps in the second over.
The first being Shafali Verma (caught of her own bowling after a leading edge), and Pratika Rawal (caught by wicket keeper Muneeba Ali), also leg before.
And there was no respite still, as in her next over she bowled a delivery which broke inwards into Smriti Mandhana, trapping the Indian for leg before - a decision at the tournament given without a review option – at which stage the entire of the Indian top order which lost the openers and their #3 batter, were undone by 20 year old Fatima Sana, who recorded figures of 3/17 at the end of her three overs.
This spell further etched another mile stone in Fatima Sana’s career as it was only the second time this year that a Pakistan pace bowler picked up three wickets inside the power play – no other bowler has done this even once. This was preceded by another economical spell this year which was achieved against the Zimbabweans at Karachi.
However it was not the bowling performance of Sana that took center stage at the conclusion, but also the send off she provided for the India captain after catching the latter of her own bowling which invited immense criticism from various sections.
The sends off by the skipper of the Pakistan cricket side also caught attention which quickly went viral on the social media for different reasons beyond the field.
This just raised the tempo of the game which had previously failed to achieve owing to very less cordial behavior between the two sets of players; particularly after the non custom hand shake at the time of the coin toss between the captains.
Her performance with the ball was inspirational but not enough to paper over the cracks in Pakistan's batting performance. Fatima Sana's captain's decision to bat after winning the toss had failed to pay dividends as India's bowling pair of Charani and Prema Rawat dismissed the women in green for just 55 runs, which set the record for the lowest score in women's T20I cricket history.
It is difficult for your triple wicket-taking captain to win the game when there is a target of 56 to defend. Harmanpreet Kaur and Deepti Sharma were able to make light of early pressure and an unbeaten 28-run partnership helped their team chase down the target inside nine overs. Fatima Sana was forced to watch in despair.
