Coach hails India Women’s positive brand of cricket

Friday, 28 September 2018 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Ramesh Powar, the India Women coach, has said the team’s 4-0 sweep of the Twenty20 International series in Sri Lanka has helped them understand the brand of cricket they want to play going into the ICC Women’s World T20 2018.

India posted scores of 150-plus when batting first, and chased down targets of 132 and 135 with five wickets and seven wickets in hand. And this despite their star batters Smriti Mandhana, Mithali Raj and, until the last game, captain Harmanpreet Kaur not making contributions of note.

“They have started to think more about positive cricket rather than just competing, about dominance rather than just competing,” Powar, the former India spinner, told Women’s CricZone in an interview.

“The message was loud and clear: it was always about getting runs at a brisk pace from every batsman. No one can have that allowance to get settled for one or two overs. You have to go after the bowling.”

For the Women’s World T20 in the Caribbean, which starts on 9 November, India are in the same group as New Zealand and Australia – two teams with a reputation for going big with fearless cricket right from ball one. Powar, who was on his first international assignment with the team, was happy to see India develop a similar approach.

He urged them to keep at it irrespective of how the pitch plays or if they were coming back from losing a game.

“I was little disappointed with the second and third ODI (Sri Lanka won the third as India won the series 2-1). The approach was not there,” he said. “It doesn’t look nice from the outside. It’s not about winning or losing all the time, it’s about the brand of cricket that India Women play.

“I’m happy if they get out in 15th or 16th over. I was not complaining at all when they got out [in 17.4 overs in the fifth T20I]. We can’t be thinking, ‘We have to look good, so we should bat for 20 overs’ ... That doesn’t make sense if you bat dot balls.”

Jemimah Rodrigues, who only made her debut earlier this year, was the stand-out batter for India, while wicket-keeper batter Taniya Bhatia, all-rounder Anuja Patil, pace bowler Arundhati Reddy and spinners Deepti Sharma and Poonam Yadav too played crucial roles.

Powar said it was about backing talent, and the same went for established players such as Mandhana, despite a poor run. “I’ll always back Smriti,” he added. “She is a proven player. She will head home, work on her game and come back strong again.”