India’s captain Harmanpreet Kaur has mentioned that she and the Indian women’s cricket team have moved on from all the controversies that made headlines when India last played against Bangladesh in a white-ball series in July this year.
India are slated to face Bangladesh in the first semifinal of the women’s cricket competition at the ongoing Asian Games on Sunday, September 24 and Harmanpreet won’t be a part of the playing XI as she is currently serving a two-match suspension after an act of dissent in the third ODI vs Bangladesh went against her and cost her heavily.
Smriti Mandhana is currently leading the side and will marshall her troops on the field in the semifinal clash against Bangladesh.
“What happened has happened, and I think we should move forward,” Harmanpreet told reporters on Friday.
Bangladesh captain Nigar Sultana Jyoti who led the team during the last series against India seems in no mood to take extra pressure leading into the semifinal fixture and has affirmed that they will be “treating it as just another game”.
“No, we will treat it as just another match. It would have been preferable to play today, but we have recent experience playing against them [India], having won the previous time we faced them,” Jyoti told in the pre-match presser.
India looked dominant in their quarterfinal fixture against Malaysia. Smriti, Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues and Richa Ghosh all looked in great touch with the willow before rain played spoilsport and the game ended in a no result.
Bangladesh’s quarterfinal fixture against Hong Kong got abandoned without a ball bowled and just like India they also qualified for the semis based on their higher seeding.
If rain hampers the semifinal clash, then Bangladesh will be eliminated as India are a higher-ranked side but Nigar is not mulling much over the same and plans to control the controllables on the day.
“Look, no one has control over the weather. We will make the necessary preparations to succeed on the day,” Joty added.