India suffered an early exit in the Women's T20 World Cup 2024 under Harmanpreet Kaur. The Women in Blue won only two of the four matches in the tournament and finished third in the five-team Group A points table.
This was the first time that the Indian women's team made a group stage exit from the T20 World Cups since 2016. They had reached the semifinals in 2018 and 2023 apart from being runners-up in 2020. Meanwhile, after the early exit, speculations are rife about whether Harmanpreet will be replaced as captain. Harmanpreet led India in all the T20 World Cups since 2018.
Notably, former Indian skipper Mithali Raj has predicted a player who can replace Harmanpreet at the helm if the selectors ask her to leave captaincy. Surprisingly, Mithali did not name vice-captain Smriti Mandhana to automatically take up the role but picked a young gun who could take the captaincy.
"If the selectors decide to change, I would go for a young captain. This is the time (to change) if you delay more then we have another World Cup on the horizon. If you are not doing it now, then don't do it later. Then it is too close to the World Cup," Mithali said as quoted by news agency PTI.
"Smriti is there (has been vice-captain for a long) but I think someone like Jemima, she's 24, she's young, she will serve you more. And someone who I feel on the field gets that energy. She speaks to everybody. I was very impressed by her in this tournament.
"Despite playing those cameo roles, she never could convert her starts, but someone who really made an effort to build momentum if there was no momentum, and if there was a momentum, she tried to carry that momentum," she added.
'No growth in this team in last three years': Mithali Raj
The former skipper also stated that the Indian team has not made any growth in the last two or three years and is saturated by beating weaker teams. She put light on India's campaign at the tournament. "If I talk about the Australia game, it was a match to win. I thought at some point we had a chance but it seemed like we were following the same template against Australia. Taking the match deep but fell short eventually. It's not working.
"I feel that in the last two, three years, I've not really seen any growth in this team, in the sense like, I mean, beating the best side is what you always prepare for but it seems like we are saturated in the sense we are beating other teams and we are pretty happy in that. Every other team has shown growth despite limited depth, a case in point being South Africa. We have not," she said.
