The highly confident Indian squad is playing the first One day International of a three-match series against Australia at Reliance Stadium, Vadodara, today.
However, there is a bad news for Indian fans. After ‘highest wicket-taker in women’s cricket’ Jhulan Goswami was ruled out of the series due to injury, Indian skipper Mithali Raj is not well and not playing today.
In the absence of Mithali, vice-captain Harmanpreet Kaur is leading the Women-in-Blue.
Kaur opted to bat and the decision backfired as Indian women lost two early wickets in the form of elegant Indian opener Smriti Mandhana (12) and 17-year-old Jemimah Rodrigues (1).
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After winning the toss, Harmanpreet Kaur said, “We’ll bat first. Our batting is outstanding. We’ll look to score big. Mithali Raj is not well. We are going with two medium pacers and three spinners. Apart from that, we have six batters. We just want to play good brand of cricket. We have done well in the past, hopefully, we do well in this series.”
“I’m really looking forward to the game today. Really excited to be back. It’s (preparation) been really good. We have had some really good practice games. It’s about coming out and executing our skills,” Meg Lanning said after losing the toss.
Meanwhile, till the filing of this copy, the Indian team had scored 83 runs for 3 in 22.3 overs.
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Teams:
India’s Playing XI: Smriti Mandhana, Punam Raut, Jemimah Rodrigues, Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Veda Krishnamurthy, Deepti Sharma, Sushma Verma (wk), Shikha Pandey, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Pooja Vastrakar, Poonam Yadav
Australia’s playing XI: Alyssa Healy (wk), Nicole Bolton, Meg Lanning (c), Ellyse Perry, Beth Mooney, Rachael Haynes, Ashleigh Gardner, Nicola Carey, Jess Jonassen, Amanda Wellington, Megan Schutt