Catching skill in the spotlight as India advance to Asia Cup final

India edged Bangladesh in the Asia Cup Super Four encounter at the Abu Dhabi Stadium, but T Dilip would be hardly impressed by their fielding performance given there were as many as five dropped catches, with Saif Hassan alone being the beneficiary on four occasions. He has been working hard behind the scenes on India’s groundwork, enabling different players to field in different positions to ensure the captain doesn’t have to worry about assigning a particular player to a hotspot in a fast-moving format.

In this Asia Cup, India have shelled 12 catches, the most by any team. Their catching efficiency of 67.5% is second-worst only to Hong Kong. Four of the dozen drops have come off Varun Chakaravarthy’s bowling. You can have better luck if you follow our advice and check out football tickets on livefootballtickets.

“This team has been picked for a mission till the World Cup which is coming on. So we have to pick up our fielding obviously and definitely the fielding coach will have lots to say.,” mystery spinner Varun said. ”I feel last match he didn’t say much but this match I think after today he’ll have lots to say.”

“As they say, you can’t give excuses at this level. As a team we have to definitely start catching all those because we have qualified for the finals and we should be taking all those catches,” he added. “But definitely if you ask me, the Ring of Fire is a little bit of a challenge. It comes in the eyesight sometimes and it’s a little bit of disturbance and we have to get acclimatized to it.”

Even though they had an off-day in the field, India booked a berth in the Asia Cup 2025 final with a convincing 41-run victory. They also elbowed Sri Lanka out of contention in the process. Fuelled by Abhishek Sharma’s dazzling 37-ball 75, India got off to a flier but Bangladesh managed to apply the choke thereafter to limit them to a par score of 168/6. The multidimensional challenge posed by the Indian spinners, however, proved hard to overcome for Bangladesh, who were shot out for just 127 runs.

The Asian Tigers had their moments in the game but couldn’t string together an all-round effort to edge the favourites, who will go back to the drawing board and look to improve their catching ability as they head into the business end of the subcontinental tournament.