Shree Charani took 4 for 10, and India’s chase of 58 lasted five overs
India bowled Japan out for 57 and knocked the runs off in five overs to reach the Asian Games semi-finals, where Bangladesh are waiting on Sunday.
Sep 18, 2026
Japan batted for 19.5 overs at Korogi Sports Park in Nisshin on Friday. India needed five to pass what they left behind. The eight-wicket win, sealed with 90 balls to spare, puts the defending champions into the Asian Games semi-finals.
Charani struck twice, then twice again
Harmanpreet Kaur put Japan in, and Shree Charani made the decision look obvious. Four overs, ten runs, four wickets, and the damage arrived in pairs. The seventh over finished Japan off as a batting side: Haruna Iwasaki went for 10, and Mai Yanagida, the Japan captain, edged the next ball for a golden duck.
Charani came into this tournament as the top-ranked bowler in the women’s T20I rankings. Japan have been playing international cricket for a fraction of the time India have, and a spell like this against them settles nothing about her standing. What it did settle was the quarter-final, with 13 overs of Japan’s innings still to come.
Fifty-seven all out, and a bowled wicket finished it
Ayaka Kato-Stafford held one end for 47 balls and made 25 of Japan’s 57, which tells you most of what happened at the other end. Akari Nishimura got to 2. Erika Oda made 5. Nobody else reached double figures.
Shafali Verma took 2 for 13 from her four overs, Deepti Sharma and Shreyanka Patil picked up one each, and India’s fielding accounted for the rest. Hinase Goto and Ahilya Chandel were both run out earlier in the innings, and it was Nonoha Yasumoto, bowled by Patil, who ended it with one ball of the 20 overs unused.
Shafali’s fifteen balls
G Kamalini went for a duck in the second over, by which point India were already 17 for 1. Bharti Fulmali made 6 and went at 24 for 2 in the third. By then the chase was already a formality, and Shafali turned it into a highlights package.
She finished 40 not out from 15 balls, with six fours and two sixes, and hit the winning runs over the rope. Richa Ghosh was there at the end on 12 from six. India 59 for 2 in five overs, capping a display in which she had already taken two wickets before she picked up a bat.
Shafali’s Games have started the way her Asia Cup finished. She made 236 runs in Dubai to top the tournament’s scoring charts, then hit 68 from 39 balls in the final against Sri Lanka on 13 September. Five days later she was taking wickets in Japan before she got near a bat.
Bangladesh on Sunday, and they have not played yet
India meet Bangladesh in the semi-final on Sunday. Bangladesh are in the last four without having faced a ball at these Games. Their quarter-final against China at the same ground on Thursday was washed out without a delivery bowled, and they went through on seeding.
Pakistan and Sri Lanka contest the other semi-final on the same day. India are defending the gold they won in Hangzhou in September 2023, when they beat Sri Lanka in the final. On this evidence the harder question is not whether they reach the final but who gets there to meet them.