Indian women’s skipper Harmanpreet Kaur made a bold claim during a recent press conference, saying, “Want to give the country another reason to celebrate this year.”
She pointed out how inspirational the Indian men’s team’s World Cup triumph has been for the women’s team and its players, as they too eye a maiden T20 World Cup triumph.
The Indian Men’s side led by skipper Rohit Sharma went on to succeed as an undefeated team in the T20 World Cup as they marched into the finals against South Africa.
The entire Indian team contributed to the team’s immense success, as was Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, and Suryakumar Yadav’s wonderful catch that led them to a World Cup triumph after 17 long years.
“We have been really inspired by the men’s team and the way they won the T20 World Cup this year.” They worked really hard for this trophy and won some tough matches. We need to learn how they maintained their body language for such matches and how they approached such games. We’re on the same road now and getting ready for our World Cup campaign,” Harmanpreet Kaur told PTI.
Indian women’s past performances across tournaments
India will kickstart their T20 World Cup campaign on the 4th of October in Dubai, when they will take on the New Zealand women. He will take on Pakistan on the 6th of the month and later play Asia Cup champions Sri Lanka on the 9th.
After that, they will move back to Sharjah to face their arch-rivals, Australia, who have always caused major trouble for the Indian women’s team in ICC tournaments. If they proceed to the playoffs, they will play semi-finals on the 17th and 18th, with the finals scheduled on the 20th of the month.
India has had their previous best records in the World Cup final in 2017, where they lost at Lord’s by nine runs, and then lost the T20 World Cup final in 2020 against Australia in Australia.
After that, they next reached the Commonwealth Games finals again to face a defeat at the hands of the Australian women, as they secured the silver medal. In the last T20 World Cup, India reached the semi-finals, where they lost by just five runs to the Aussie women again.
Their latest inconvenient defeat came in the Asia Cup, where underdogs Sri Lanka emerged as Asia Cup champions, breaking the long legacy of Indian women in the competition.
INDIA’s SQUAD for the T20 World Cup: Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Smriti Mandhana (vc), Richa Ghosh (wk), Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy, Renuka Singh, D Hemalatha, Yastika Bhatia (wk), Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Asha Sobhana, Radha Yadav, Shreyanka Patil, Sajeevan Sajana
