Birmingham: Because the solar for Friday rises in the UK, the Edgbaston Cricket Floor will witness a brand new daybreak for girls’s cricket when India face off in opposition to T20 World Cup champions Australia within the first-ever match of the ladies’s T20 occasion at 2022 Commonwealth Video games.
As Meg Lanning and Harmanpreet Kaur lead their groups at Edgbaston, it is going to additionally mark the comeback of cricket within the Commonwealth Video games fold after 24 years, when the 1998 version had males’s Checklist A matches at Kuala Lumpur. However, in 2022, Birmingham will see the debut of girls’s cricket and T20 format collectively.
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The inclusion of girls’s T20 cricket within the 2022 Commonwealth Video games is seen as a vital second to unfold its visibility in direction of a wider multi-sport watching viewers and on the similar time, show to be a significant instance for cricket pushing to be included in 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“As a result of as a cricketer we’re all the time wishing to play extra cricket and this yr, we’re getting participation in a multi-sport occasion. I feel that everytime you go for an occasion, it turns into essential to carry out effectively and to indicate the capabilities in your crew. In future, if we get to take part in tournaments like this, positively it will be excellent for girls’s cricket,” mentioned Harmanpreet in a digital interplay earlier than leaving for Birmingham.
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Every time India and Australia have met beforehand in group phases of Girls’s T20 World Cup, the women in blue jersey find yourself on the profitable facet. Within the 2018 version in West Indies, India had crushed Australia by 48 runs. Within the 2020 version, India once more defeated Australia by 17 runs, leaving them on the point of an early exit from the match at dwelling.
Although Australia received the match by defeating India within the last in entrance of 86,174 followers on the Melbourne Cricket Floor, followers from either side will likely be itching to see how an India-Australia conflict within the Commonwealth Video games 2022 pans out.
With all-rounder Pooja Vastrakar but to hitch the crew resulting from Covid-19 an infection and batter Sabbhineni Meghana on her technique to be a part of the crew, India successfully have 13 members to select from for his or her enjoying eleven in opposition to Australia.
Other than Harmanpreet, quite a bit depends upon a powerful core of Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues and Deepti Sharma if India are to clinch a medal within the quadrennial occasion. With Sneh Rana returning after being rested from the Sri Lanka sequence and wicket-keeper plus strokeful batter Yastika Bhatia within the combine, India have a great mixture of skilled and children.
However, Australia have the identical set of gamers who have been there within the T20 World Cup triumph at dwelling and extra lately, in Girls’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand. They’ve a depth which is the envy of all nations, a lot that premier all-rounder Ellyse Perry hasn’t been a positive starter within the T20I enjoying eleven. Although they’re with out Matthew Mott, who’s moved on to be England males’s white-ball coach and Ben Sawyer, who’s now New Zealand girls’s head coach, anticipate Australia to retain their dominant play.
Profitable a gold medal within the 2022 Commonwealth Video games would be the extension of the legacy Meg Lanning and her crew will likely be aiming for. However they are going to be up in opposition to an brisk Indian crew which is within the publish Mithali Raj-Jhulan Goswami period and with a killing angle in thoughts, anticipate them to offer a troublesome struggle to Australia in yet one more mega occasion.
Squads
India: Harmanpreet Kaur (captain), Smriti Mandhana (vice-captain), Shafali Verma, S. Meghana, Taniyaa Sapna Bhatia (wicket-keeper), Yastika Bhatia (wicket-keeper), Deepti Sharma, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Pooja Vastrakar, Meghna Singh, Renuka Thakur, Jemimah Rodrigues, Radha Yadav, Harleen Deol and Sneh Rana.
Australia: Meg Lanning (captain), Rachael Haynes (vice-captain), Darcie Brown, Nicola Carey, Ashleigh Gardner, Grace Harris, Alyssa Healy (wicketkeeper), Jess Jonassen, Alana King, Beth Mooney, Tahlia McGrath, Ellyse Perry, Megan Schutt, Annabel Sutherland and Amanda-Jade Wellington.
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