India open their Asia Cup defence with a nine-wicket win against host nation United Arab Emirates in Dubai.<\/p>\n
Published On 10 Sep 202510 Sep 2025<\/p>\n
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Kuldeep Yadav returned figures of 4-7 to lead holders India to a crushing nine-wicket win over hosts United Arab Emirates in their opening match of the Asia Cup.<\/p>\n
Kuldeep struck three times in one over with his left-arm wrist spin as tournament favourites India skittled UAE for a paltry 57 in 13.1 overs after they elected to field first in the T20 in Dubai on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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India romped home to victory in 4.3 overs after left-handed opener Abhishek Sharma hit 30 off 16 balls and vice-captain Shubman Gill stood unbeaten on 20.<\/p>\n
But it was the bowlers who set up victory for the reigning T20 World Cup champions as medium-pacer Shivam Dube claimed three before Kuldeep wrapped up the innings.<\/p>\n
Put in to bat, UAE opener Alishan Sharafu started briskly with boundaries before falling to pace bowler Jasprit Bumrah for 22 off 17 balls.<\/p>\n
Skipper Muhammad Waseem struck 19 to be the only other batsman to make double figures in an otherwise shambolic show by the rest of the team.<\/p>\n
Kuldeep\u2019s three wickets, including Waseem, in his second over rattled the opposition batting, which soon fell apart.<\/p>\n
In reply, Sharma came out attacking as he smashed left-arm spinner Haider Ali for a six and a four.<\/p>\n
He hit two more sixes in his blitz before being caught out by off-pace bowler Junaid Siddique.<\/p>\n
Gill finished off the chase with a boundary as skipper Suryakumar Yadav, unbeaten on seven, looked on from the other end.<\/p>\n
India won the previous Asia Cup, which was played in a 50-over format in 2023, when they beat hosts Sri Lanka in the final in Colombo.<\/p>\n
India will next face Pakistan on Sunday in the most highly anticipated match of the T20 tournament, which serves as a build-up competition for next year\u2019s T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India open their Asia Cup defence with a nine-wicket win against host nation United Arab Emirates in Dubai.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[521,1406,730,12,93,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-414512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-cricket","10":"tag-india","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-sport","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115182938675360821","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}