Women in Blue seek a reboot against West Indies

India's women's cricket team faces challenges after ODI series defeat, jet lag, and captaincy scrutiny ahead of T20I series.

The last few days have been excruciating for India’s women’s cricket team. After suffering an embarrassing ODI series defeat against Australia earlier this week, the team had to travel for more than seven thousand kilometres - from Perth to Navi Mumbai - and gear up for a T20I home series against the West Indies, beginning at the DY Patil Stadium on Sunday.

A jet-lagged India captain Harmanpreet Kaur admitted on the eve of the series opener that it’s difficult to prepare with such a short turnaround time. However, she evaded questions on the scheduling.

Having lost all the three games against Australia, Harmanpreet’s captaincy has been under scanner and as the team aims to bounce back, it needs to fix the weak links.

Smriti Mandhana scored four centuries in a calendar year in women’s ODIs, even though the overall batting department has failed to step up in crunch situations. “It’s really tough when you are going through this patch. While coming back from Australia, we had good talks on the flight and we discussed how to start afresh against the West Indies,” Harmanpreet said.

India has won each of its last eight T20Is against the West Indies in the shortest format since November 2019, but now, the batters need to take more responsibility, in the absence of Shafali Verma, who was dropped despite scoring 531 runs in 20 T20Is this year. The captain, with two fifties in her last two T20I innings, needs to anchor the middle-order.

While Harmanpreet was confident that her team would bounce back in familiar conditions, it won’t be easy as the West Indies has won nine of its 13 T20Is this year. Skipper Hayley Matthews stated that her side will be hoping to play some ‘really good cricket’ to tame India at home as the focus will be on her and young Qiana Joseph. Deandra Dottin’s return will boost the visiting team’s confidence.

The teams (from): India: Harmanpreet Kaur (Capt.), Smriti Mandhana, Nandini Kashyap, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh (wk), Uma Chetry (wk), Deepti Sharma, Sajeevan Sajana, Raghvi Bist, Renuka Thakur, Priya Mishra, Titas Sadhu, Saima Thakor, Minnu Mani and Radha Yadav.