Dubai:Shafali Verma lived a charmed life for her stroke filled 64 off 40 balls as India marched into yet another Women’s Asia Cup final with a comfortable 40-run win over Bangladesh here on Thursday.

On a slow surface where batting was a struggle for majority of the batters, Shafali stood out with her fluent effort to take India to 149 for five. The Indian opener was dropped as many as three times and she duly made Bangladesh pay for those mistakes. Considering the conditions and India’s bowling resources, the seven-time champions were expected to defend the target and they did rather comfortably, limiting Bangladesh to 109 for 7 in 20 overs. Bangladesh never threatened India despite the aggressive intent of opener Juairiya Ferdous (14 off 18). Eventually Ferdous and her opening partner Dilara Akter (21 off 26) fell while attempting to clear the mid-wicket boundary. Kranti Gaud’s running catch to get ride of Akter was a brilliant effort on an otherwise ordinary day for the fielders.

Like the last game, Pratika Rawal dropped a couple of catches. The Indian spin trio of Deepti Sharma (3/26), Shree Charani (1/14) and Prema Rawat (1/21) too delivered in spin friendly conditions.

It has been a low scoring tournament mainly due to the slow nature of the pitches here. Considering that and Bangaldesh’s batting, India deep down and knew they had got enough on the board.

They play either Pakistan or Sri Lanka in the final scheduled for Sunday.

Brief scores:

India 149/6 in 20 overs (Shafali Verma 64, Harmanpreet Kaur 24 not out; Sultana Khatun 2/30) beat Bangladesh 109/7 in 20 overs (Dilara Akter 21, Shorna Akter 22 not out; Deepti Sharma 3/26, Nandani Sharma 2/10) by 40 runs.