In the last 107 hours, the Indian women’s cricket team has lived at the eye of a storm. Some of it was self-inflicted, perhaps, having declined to receive the Women’s Asia Cup trophy from Mohsin Naqvi, the ACC’s sitting president but, more pointedly, Pakistan’s interior minister. That controversy aside, India also reduced the final itself to a formality, dispatching Sri Lanka by 72 runs, before embarking on a near-8,000-kilometre odyssey — Dubai to Delhi first, and eventually on to Nagoya.
AS IT HAPPENED
Against that backdrop, Harmanpreet Kaur’s team could dearly have done with a campaign opener that did not demand much out of the players. They got precisely that in the fourth quarter-final of the women’s cricket competition at the 2026 Asian Games. Bowling hosts Japan out for 57, India strolled to the target inside five overs, shedding only two wickets along the way.