Fantastic effort – Amol Muzumdar on India’s dominant Asia Cup performance
The Indian women’s team put up a clinical show in Dubai as they lifted the ACC Women’s Asia Cup last night. It was a collective show from Team India as they managed to tot up the second highest total of the tournament while their bowlers were bang on the money to skittle out Sri Lanka for 111.
India’s head coach, Amol Muzumdar opened up on India’s excellent all-round performance while decoding on-field calls during the summit clash. He also lauded India’s individual performances while underlining their plan to get hold of Chamari Athapaththu’s wicket.
Assessing Team India’s performance in the tournament, Muzumdar said, “Fantastic effort. They showed up from the first game and, fittingly, finished it off strong. Really proud of all the players and all the support staff as well. It was a fantastic pitch today, and we came up good. I think our batting was really strong. We started off really nicely, and that's what we spoke about in the meetings, and the girls went on to execute things really nicely.”
Explaining India’s call to bat first in the final, Muzumdar added, “I mean, if you see throughout the fortnight, I think the pitches were on the slower side, and they turned quite a bit. So putting the score on the board and then defending it, we did have the luxury of having three quality spinners in our ranks. So I think that was predominantly the tactic: put the score on the board and then go out there and defend.”
Lauding Verma’s brilliance, Muzumdar stated, “Absolutely fantastic. The left-hand-right-hand combination (with Smriti)... Shafali has got her own style and the firepower that she has, and just the charisma that she has on the pitch just puts the opposition on the back foot. Smriti, as usual, she has got that flair, she has got that touch. So they complement each other really well, and I'm glad that they had a good show time today.”
He concluded by talking about how India planned to combat Chamari Athapaththu, saying, “We went back to the five-match series what we played in December against Sri Lanka in India, and how we dismissed Chamari, very important wicket as far as Sri Lanka is concerned. So I thought that was the plan, but I'm glad that Deepti went on to execute it nicely.”
