Asia Cup 2016: India Win Sixth T20 Title by 8 Wickets — Shikhar Dhawan's 60 Off 44 Chases Rain-Reduced Bangladesh at Mirpur

India won the Asia Cup 2016 on 6 March 2016 at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium, Mirpur, Dhaka, beating Bangladesh by 8 wickets in a rain-reduced T20I final. Rain reduced the match to 15 overs per side; Bangladesh scored 120/5 in 15 overs. India chased 122/2 in 13.5 overs — Shikhar Dhawan scoring 60 off 44 balls and Virat Kohli contributing an unbeaten 41 off 28. Dhawan won Player of the Match; Sabbir Rahman (Bangladesh) won Player of the Tournament with 176 runs in 5 innings. MS Dhoni captained India; Mashrafe Mortaza captained Bangladesh. It was India's sixth Asia Cup title.

Shikhar Dhawan 60 Off 44: The Opening Innings That Settled the Rain-Reduced Chase

Shikhar Dhawan's 60 off 44 balls — hitting 9 fours and 1 six in the opening partnership with Rohit Sharma — gave India the platform from which Virat Kohli's unbeaten 41 off 28 completed the rain-reduced 15-over chase of Bangladesh's 120/5. Dhawan's 60 in a 122-run India chase in 13.5 overs reflected the batting momentum that T20 openers who attack from ball one provide: with only 15 overs available (rain having removed 5 overs from both innings), each boundary from the opening partnership compressed the asking rate and left Kohli the task of finishing calmly rather than hitting from the outset. India's 8-wicket win — completed in 13.5 of the 15 available overs — reflected how completely Dhawan's 60 off 44 set up Bangladesh's 120/5 as a total that India's batting was always going to overhaul with wickets in hand.

Sabbir Rahman Player of the Tournament: Dominant Batting from the Losing Team

Sabbir Rahman winning Player of the Tournament at the 2016 Asia Cup with 176 runs in 5 innings — the most runs in the competition — from the Bangladesh team that lost the final gave the tournament's individual award to the player whose scoring consistency across the group stage and knockout rounds exceeded every India or other qualifying team's batter. Rahman, Bangladesh's right-handed middle-order batter who had developed into one of the most forceful T20 batsmen in Asian cricket, accumulating 176 tournament runs across the 2016 Asia Cup in the Mirpur conditions Bangladesh know well, gave Bangladesh's tournament campaign one of its standout individual batting contributors — even as Dhawan's 60 in the final settled the title win for India. MS Dhoni's India, in a T20 final held just weeks before the ICC World Twenty20 in India, demonstrating batting depth (Dhawan, Kohli, Rohit) against a Bangladesh team with the competition's leading run-scorer gave the 2016 Asia Cup a final that reflected India's T20 batting quality.

Asia Cup 2016 in Context

The Asia Cup 2016 — played in T20 format in Bangladesh in February-March 2016 — was the 13th edition of the competition. India's 8-wicket win over Bangladesh — Shikhar Dhawan 60 off 44, Kohli 41* in a rain-reduced 15-over final — gave the 2016 Asia Cup title to MS Dhoni's India as a confidence booster immediately before the ICC World Twenty20 held in India the following month. Bangladesh reaching the 2016 Asia Cup final — for the first time as T20 Asia Cup finalists — reflected the quality of Mashrafe Mortaza's team and the advantage of playing on home Mirpur pitches they know intimately. Sabbir Rahman's 176 tournament runs as Player of the Tournament confirmed that Bangladesh had produced the competition's most prolific individual batter without achieving the final win.