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

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.

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.

"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.”