3 biggest takeaways from India's squad for Women's Asia Cup
India announced their squad for the Women's Asia Cup 2024 on Saturday. The continental event will take place in Sri Lanka this year, with the first match scheduled to happen on July 19. India will enter the competition as the defending champions.
As expected, the BCCI have picked players from the Indian squad playing in the ongoing T20I series against South Africa Women. Here's the list of 15 women selected for Women's Asia Cup 2024:
Sajana Sajeevan, Richa Ghosh (wk), Uma Chetry (wk), Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy, Renuka Singh Thakur, Dayalan Hemalatha, Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Smriti Mandhana (vc), Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Asha Sobhana, Radha Yadav and Shreyanka Patil.
Four players - Saika Ishaque, Shweta Sehrawat, Tanuja Kanwer and Meghna Singh - will travel with the squad as reserves. While there weren't any major surprises from the team announcement, here are the three biggest takeaways from India's Women's Asia Cup 2024 squad.
#1 Amanjot Kaur and Shabnam Shakil miss out on Women's Asia Cup 2024
As mentioned earlier, the selectors have picked all 15 players from the squad playing in the series against South Africa. However, the squad for the series against South Africa features 17 players, while the maximum number of players in an Asia Cup squad is 15.
Hence, the BCCI dropped two players - Amanjot Kaur and Shabnam Shakil. Interestingly, neither feature in the list of traveling reserves as well.
Amanjot has four wickets and 89 runs in 12 T20Is, while 17-year-old medium pacer Shabnam is yet to make her T20I debut.
#2 Team management shows faith in Uma Chetry
The Indian squad for the Women's Asia Cup 2024 features two wicketkeepers, - Richa Ghosh and Uma Chetry. While Richa has played 50 T20Is, backup wicketkeeper Uma recently made her debut against South Africa.
Uma executed one stumping on her debut, showing that she can step up and keep wickets in case Richa is unavailable. It will be interesting to see how Uma performs if she receives an opportunity to play on the grand stage.
#3 Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana will have to shoulder the batting unit
Openers Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana will have the onus of scoring runs at the top of the order in the Asia Cup. Both batters have enormous experience of T20I cricket and WPL.
If Mandhana and Verma get going, it will be difficult for any team to stop the defending champions. For the record, Verma has scored 1,721 runs in 74 T20I innings, while Mandhana has 3,266 runs in 134 T20I appearances.
India will start their Asia Cup 2024 campaign against Pakistan on July 19. The other two teams in India's group are the UAE and Nepal. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand are in the other group. The two two teams from each group will progress to the semi-finals.