CHENNAI: Almost 21 months after their last home international game, Indian women will be taking the field against Australia in the first of the five T20Is starting Friday in Mumbai. In fact, it will only be their fourth T20I ninth across formats at home since they lost to the same opponent in the final of the T20 World Cup in March 2020.
In the two and a half years since that heartbreaking night at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Indian team has come a long way. At some level, it seems like they have pressed a fast-forward button. Barring the core four-five players from that squad, a lot of fresh faces have come in and secured a place for themselves. They reached the final of the Commonwealth Games, won the Asia Cup, and now there is another T20 World Cup on the horizon.
They have, at best, 10 T20Is before the global tournament and with five of them being in South Africa means this series against Australia is essentially the last one they would be playing before finalising their squad. And they are not without chinks. This is why, as India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said on Thursday, it is a very important series for the hosts. "We have to play good cricket now, taking a lot of responsibility as a team. Every tournament, we are reaching finals, but we are yet to win that big trophy,” said Harmanpreet in the pre-match press conference.
Since she took over as all-format captain in June this year, India seemed to prefer having several spin options with Renuka Singh Thakur and Pooja Vastrakar forming the pace attack. However, Pooja is not available for this series due to injury and in her absence, they have opted for Railways' Anjali Sarvani, who earned her maiden call-up after a stellar season, and have two more left-arm pacers as net bowlers with the team. The bigger surprise was the absence of Sneh Rana who has been among the leading wicket-takers for India this season. Harmanpreet said that whoever got selected were based on domestic performances and the ones who have missed are on the radar as well.
They also will not have the services of Shafali Verma and Richa Ghosh for the final T20I as they will be reporting for the U19 camp at the NCA from December 19. They will also not be a part of the tri-series in South Africa, which means Sabbineni Meghana and Yastika Bhatia will have a significant role to play than they have so far.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is that they will not have a head coach and it is likely that the situation could continue till the marquee event. However, Harmanpreet is not worried about it. She feels the familiarity of Hrishikesh Kanitkar and how much he has worked with the batters over the past few months will be helpful. “If a new coach would have come, we would have to explain a lot of things, such as how we are working. He (Kanitkar) already knew the type of work we were doing. When we got to know that he's coming on board, the team got a lot of positivity because we really liked the way he worked with us in Sri Lanka,” she said.
The last time India went up against Australia, they came close to winning the CWG gold medal. This time, they would want to go all the way, for a series win against the World Champions would be a massive morale boost before they took off for South Africa.