India Women vs New Zealand Women | Smriti Mandhana feels for India's batting fragility

SportsCafe Desk

BySportsCafe Desk, SportsCafe Editor

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Whitewashed by New Zealand women in the three-match T20I series, Smriti Mandhana feels that her team needs to address its batting woes, after losing all the three games from winning positions. India failed to win the third T20 against the hosts by only two runs where Mandhanas's 82 was the highest.

Indian Women failed to win the third T20I against New Zealand after Mandhana took the Indian team on course for a consolation win with a career-best knock of 86 from 52 balls but the visiting side failed to build on her brilliant knock to end the innings at 159 for 4 only to keep themselves two short of what would have been a complete performance.

“Well I think the girls fought really well. If you look back at the series and see, 70 or 80 per cent of the times we were in winning positions. That’s a good take away but there are a lot of things which we can improve,” said a hopeful Mandhana, as reported by PTI.

“We need to address those (batting) issues as soon as possible. We need someone who can bat through 20 overs and someone who can go in at the middle overs and get runs later on."

Smriti returned as the highest run-getter from the T20 series amassing 180 runs from three games at an average of 60 which included two half-centuries. But due to not having much support from the other end, the left-hander felt sorry about her inability to get India home on Sunday.

“I really wanted to finish the game for India. I have never been that animated ever. I badly wanted to do it today and help the team get over the line but unfortunately, I couldn’t,” the Indian opener explained.

While Counting on the positives from this recently concluded tour Mandhana pointed on the team doing well in the first two matches of the ODI series which they won 2-1.

“We have done a lot of good things. We really played well in the first two matches of the ODI series. But we became a little complacent after that and we will try to go with the same intensity in all the future matches,” she added.

“Definitely, because the girls don’t have the experience of playing in front of such good crowds. We generally get this sort of crowd in World Cup. If we can pull crowds in such series that will really be good, everyone will be prepared to play under pressure."

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