Harmanpreet Kaur praises Mithali Raj and Smriti Mandhana’s partnership despite losing the match

Harmanpreet Kaur praises Mithali Raj and Smriti Mandhana’s partnership despite losing the match

no photo

Indian women's team lost their second game in the tri-series to England but Harmanpreet Kaur was all praise for Mithali Raj and Smriti Mandhana for their effort in posting a good first-innings total. The Indian skipper has also emphasized on the need of the improvement in the bowling department.

After being asked to bat first, Indian openers started up brilliantly and especially, Smriti Mandhana and Mithali Raj struck brilliant half-centuries to lead India's surge in the beginning. While their approach was refreshing, England's all-out attack proved effective at the end. In the end, Danielle Wyatt's power-game, which included 15 boundaries and five sixes, almost single-handedly blunted India's challenge. While taking this type of loss was indeed painful, Kaur had words of praise for the Indian opening duo.

"If you see the first innings, the wicket was not that easy to bat on, but the way Mithali di and Smriti batted it was outstanding. I know in the bowling department we are not improving, we need to improve and we will definitely improve," Harmanpreet said as quoted by PTI.

"Well, if wicket is good, we still need that much guts to bat or ball on, we just cannot depend on the wicket. We always need that effort to do something on the ground. And at least as a batting unit, we are showing that."

Despite Indian batters posting a good total of 198, the Indian bowlers seemed helpless in the front of the English batting order, especially Wyatt who played a brilliant 124-run knock which helped the visitors chase down the total in just 18.4 over. The Indian women cricket team skipper admitted that her side’s bowling department needs to work hard and also pointed out that the players were not being able to make a come back in the game after leaking runs in the first over.

"The only reason we could not make it today is that we did not ball dot-balls, the right-handed batswoman said.

"Of course, you get to know from the bowlers body language what she will do, sometimes when the first over does not go well, it becomes hard for the bowlers to bounce back, those are the areas we need to work on. Improvements come match by match and the good thing is that the girls know these things.”

“In the last game, when we got a good start, after that our lower order did not perform. So today, when I went for batting, I was looking for runs and whoever was batting with me, I was telling them we have to rotate the strike and we cannot (just) depend on the opening partnership, we have to get lot of runs as much as we can and we got it done.”

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all