Yuvraj, Jhulan lead wishes for Smriti Mandhana on 24th birthday
Women's team coach WV Raman and the Board of Control for Cricket in India also extended their best wishes to the birthday girl.
India women lost to Australia in the final of the recently concluded ICC Women’s T20 World Cup by 85 runs.
The Women in Blue, who remained unbeaten across the group stage, inched England on the virtue of better points after the semifinal match between the two teams got washed out without a ball being bowled. Australia, on the other hand, inched South Africa by 5 runs to make it to the final.
India played their last match of league stage on February 29 and the washed-out semifinal ensured that they qualified for the final without playing any match for the past seven days. According to Women’s head coach WV Raman, this played a huge role in India’s loss.
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“I don’t want this to sound like an excuse, but what didn’t help us was that leading up to the final, we were inactive for a week,” said WV Raman as quoted by ICC via Cricbuzz.
India’s 7-day gap for their next match saw them dropping catches and underperforming in front of a dominant Australian team, who clinched the trophy for a record fifth time.
“It’s not easy for a young side to switch on and switch off at will. It can be done by a very experienced side, maybe, just maybe. After almost a week, wherein half the week was spent looking at the rains and then you had a couple of practice sessions, you go into the final. It’s not that easy for the mental edge to be there or be switched on from ball one, and that’s something we will learn from experience,” Raman added.
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