This is, in many respects, a new beginning for India. They begin the 2018 ICC Women‘s ODI Championship cycle with a clean slate and without their stalwart skipper Mithali Raj, who retired from the game earlier this month. Here in this article, we talk about Ramesh Powar encourages young people.
When you throw in the unexplained absence of two seasoned bowlers, Jhulan Goswami and Shikha Pandey, the vacancy and its related transitional issues seem to grow even wider.
But, with T20s taking precedence as women’s cricket prepares for its Commonwealth Games debut in July and a World Cup eight months away, the new all-formats leadership group of captain Harmanpreet Kaur, vice-captain Smriti Mandhana, and head coach Ramesh Powar has a strangely relieving, almost settled vibe.
During their last six-month relationship, which began in 2018, they had a seven-match T20I winning streak leading up to their World Cup semi-final elimination in the Caribbean. Since then, T20 has been the format in which India Women have repeatedly threatened to become global champions but have yet to win a trophy.
Although the leadership of Indian cricket is still assessing this new chapter, they are confident in their young group and believe that their first-choice XI deserves a fair run to deliver positive outcomes.
With two major championships on the horizon, consistency – in terms of opportunities and performances – is the watchword, and India has its sights set on multi-dimensional players who can provide value to the table.
“At the moment, we’re trying to analyze where we are as a team and where we need to get to [in order] to be able to beat all the teams in an ICC event,” Ramesh Powar said before the squad left for Sri Lanka on Saturday, June 18.
As a result, this series will allow us to put some of the players to the test. We are excited about the next eight months. Trying to plan ahead of time for the situations we will confront in the future. Right now, it’s more of a planning phase. We’ll go ahead with those ideas as the series and tournament go.”
“Definitely we will see in T20″ [play] Our first combination, give them as many games as possible.” Captain Harmanpreet said. “In ODIs, we still have a little time to prepare for the next World Cup. [in 2025] And this is where we will see if we can give every player a chance in the team.”
“To add to this,” shouted Powar, “we will freeze the combination of our XI that will participate in the Commonwealth [Games] So that we are confident to go ahead in the tournament. And the players will have confidence that they are going to play in the first game.”
The Indian side will play three T20Is against the hosts in Sri Lanka, which will be their only practice before the CWG in 2022, and three ODIs as part of the IWC 2022-25. The picked squad met for a week of preparation at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru. His efforts in intra-squad games, however, were limited by inclement weather, aside from fitness assessments and practice.
However, the squad’s preparations have been rather robust, given most of the Senior Women’s T20 Trophy players were engaged with their home sides a fortnight after India’s ODI World Cup group-stage defeat.
