India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur has stated that her team is taking inspiration from the Indian men's team led by Rohit Sharma who won the T20 World Cup earlier this year in June. The Indian team defeated South Africa in the final played in Barbados to win the trophy after 17 long years having previously won the T20 World Cup in the inaugural edition.
However, the women's team is yet to win a World Cup despite making the final multiple times in the last few years. "We have been really inspired by the men's team, the way they won the T20 World Cup this year. They worked really hard for this trophy and won some tough matches. We need to learn how they maintained their body language for such matches and how they approached such games.
"We're on the same road now and getting ready for our World Cup campaign. The team is working really hard and our attempt will be to give our country and fans another opportunity to celebrate this year," Kaur said at the event in Delhi on the same day when India's 15-member squad was announced for the upcoming Women's T20 World Cup in the UAE.
For the unversed, the Indian Women's team lost to England in the final of the ODI World Cup in 2017 and then went down to Australia twice - in the final of the T20 World Cup in 2020 and then in the gold medal match at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham two years ago. India lost to Australia again in the semifinal of the T20 World Cup last year.
Opening up on the pressure in the World Cup, Kaur stated that no team should be taken lightly in such events and hoped that the team would live up to the expectations this time. "The World Cup is a kind of tournament for which all teams prepare differently. So no team can be taken lightly and similarly no team should be overestimated either. Bilateral series have a different kind of pressure and for World Cups, there is pressure as well as expectations and hopes of fans.
"We are working extremely hard to live up to those expectations, we have been holding camps where all players are working hard. We have also worked on the mistakes we made the last time. Now we're ready with a positive mindset," Kaur added. As for the upcoming World Cup in the UAE, India are in Group A with Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Pakistan. The women in blue will get their campaign underway on October 4 against New Zealand.
India squad for Women's T20 World Cup: Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Smriti Mandhana (vc), Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh (wk), Yastika Bhatia* (wk), Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy, Renuka Singh Thakur, Dayalan Hemalatha, Asha Sobhana, Radha Yadav, Shreyanka Patil*, Sajana Sajeevan
Travelling reserves: Uma Chetry (wk), Tanuja Kanwer, Saima Thakor
Non-Travelling Reserves: Raghvi Bist, Priya Mishra
