COLOMBO: India beat Nepal by seven wickets in Colombo on Sunday to win the first Blind Women’s T20 World Cup.

India won the toss and elected to field and restricted Nepal to 114-5.

They replied with 117-3 in just 12 overs to become the unbeaten champions in an inaugural tournament that also included Australia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the United States.

India’s Phula Saren top-scored with 44 off 27 deliveries. Nepal’s top scorer was Sarita Ghimire with 35 off 38 balls.

Sri Lanka and India co-hosted the tournament with the final at Sri Lanka’s oldest Test venue, the P Saravanamuttu Stadium.

Blind cricket is played with a white plastic ball packed with ball bearings that rattle as it rolls, which allows it to be heard by players.

The bowler must ask the striker if he or she is ready and then yell “play” as the ball is delivered underarm with at least one bounce.

Each side has 11 players, like regular cricket, but at least four must be totally blind. Players are required to wear blindfolds for fairness.

Fielders clap once to reveal their positions.

Other players can be partially sighted, classified by how far they can see — two metres for B2 players, six for B3.

Each team can have up to eight B1, or totally blind, players. Any run scored by a B1 player is counted as two.

SAN JOSE, Calif — The week leading into Saturday’s NWSL Championship was dominated by distress over the future of Washington Spirit forward Trinity Rodman, and the league’s inability to retain its biggest star due to the limitations of the salary cap.

But as the final minutes ticked away at PayPal Park on Saturday, Gotham FC midfielder Rose Lavelle was the star of the moment, the player who found that “magic,” as head coach Juan Carlos Amoros called it the day prior, for a 1-0 victory over Washington.

Brilliance in those moments that matter carried Gotham through another unlikely playoff run to its second championship in three seasons.

Lavelle’s trademark left foot curled a shot into the net in the 80th minute in one of the rare moments of transition in a match that was mostly a midfield stalemate. Gotham’s victory completed a storybook playoff run and left the steady, consistent Spirit stuck as runners-up for the second straight year.

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Gotham’s championship triumph is the epitome of knockout soccer and the right timing to survive and advance. Gotham did exactly that throughout these playoffs, scraping by at times to defeat the record-setting Kansas City Current in the final seconds of extra time before knocking off the defending champions Orlando Pride in stoppage time on their only shot on goal in that semifinal.

On Saturday, a series of unfortunate events upended the Spirit and benefitted Gotham. Moments before Lavelle’s goal, Spirit midfielder Hal Hershfelt went down with an injury and Washington played several minutes down a player as Hershfelt received treatment on the sideline. She eventually hobbled back onto the field to bring the Spirit back to 11 players as head coach Adrian Gonzalez prepared a substitute, but the match went on, and Gotham fullback Bruninha broke through down the left side and delivered a cutback cross to Lavelle 18 yards out in the central area that Hershfelt had otherwise commanded throughout the match.

Hershfelt and Croix Bethune patrolled the midfield for Washington, but Lavelle, Jaedyn Shaw, and Jaelin Howell canceled out the Spirit’s attempt to control the central areas. Gotham was neither flashy nor spectacular, but they were once again successful. It wasn’t luck, and in truth it wasn’t really magic — not in the Hocus Pocus kind of intangible way.

The “underdog” label for this Gotham team was always superficial. This is a team that won the Concacaf title earlier this year, a team that pushed toward the top of the league a year ago, a team filled with stars, from Lavelle to Shaw and Esther González.

But it is also a team that has wildly underperformed throughout the year, which is why it had to take the hard road to this title.

Gotham’s success is also ironic: A team that Amoros built to be interchangeable and fluid was dragged through the playoffs largely by its stars.

Shaw registered a goal and an assist in the quarterfinal win over the top-seeded Current, followed by the game-winner in the semifinal over the 2024 champion Orlando Pride. On Saturday, it was Lavelle’s left foot that made the difference.

Gotham, with two championships in three years and a Concacaf crown, has mastered the art of knockout soccer.

And that is the beauty of the NWSL and the playoff system, the unpredictable “superpower” the commissioner Jessica Berman and executives rave about. Nobody could be fooled into thinking that Gotham was the best team over the course of the NWSL season. Kansas City set records for points and wins while clinching the Shield by a commanding 21 points.

But Gotham earned its trophy by beating that Kansas City team, followed by last year’s champions.

The NWSL’s biggest story was and still is Rodman and her future. Rodman, however, was mostly a non-factor for the 30-plus minutes that she played off the bench on Saturday due to the limitations of the MCL sprain that she sustained last month. For the second straight year, the USWNT star played through pain on the losing end in an NWSL Championship loss.

After the match, she sat on the bench briefly before slowly walking across the field to embrace her boyfriend, tennis star Ben Shelton. Whether that was Rodman’s last walk across an NWSL stadium for the foreseeable future is unknown.

Saturday, however, was about a Gotham team that kept finding a way to win throughout November, even when it was outplayed. This is the sweet uncertainty of sports, and especially the NWSL, at its finest.

Sports — and championships — are about moments. They are moments of brilliance for one team and poor fortune for another. Gotham bided its time through the “high highs and low lows,” as Lavelle described it on Friday.

A day later, one moment of brilliance from Lavelle delivered the ultimate high.