There should be fearlessness on domestic circuit, says Smriti Mandhana

There should be fearlessness on domestic circuit, says Smriti Mandhana

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In-form India women’s team member, Smriti Mandhana, believes that a more fearless attitude on the domestic circuit will result in better performances from the national team at the global level. Mandhana added that running between the wickets is another area in which the Indian team can improve.

Smriti Mandhana has quickly established herself as one of the shining stars in the current Indian women’s team alongside veteran leaders like Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur and Jhulan Goswami. Mandhana was also adjudged as ICC women’s cricketer of the year for 2018 after she enjoyed a brilliant season opening the innings for the Indian team.

Still aged just 22, Mandhana has a long way to go and is certainly someone to look out for along with fellow youngsters - Jemimah Rodrigues and Taniya Bhatia. However, Mandhana believes that domestic cricket needs to improve in order to churn out better performers who can play at a higher level in global competitions.

"There is a huge gap between international and domestic cricket. That gap needs to be lessened. The batters we get in domestic, they face very different bowling and fielding attack to international cricket.

"Our domestic circuit needs to step up. There should be a bit of fearlessness in domestic circuit because if you start playing fearless cricket in the domestic circuit, you are going to play the same way in international cricket," Mandhana said in a recent interview with TOI.

The Indian opener said that Indian batters need step out of their comfort zone and need to select areas to hit the ball.

"I think we need to leave that fear, including me. We need to select the areas where to hit. Our batters are not going out there and selecting the areas in terms of which balls to hit.

"I think another major difference between other teams and our team is running between the wickets. We either play a dot ball or boundary. We will be looking to work on reducing the dot-ball percentage, taking more singles and rotating the strike," Mandhana added.

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