Harmanpreet Kaur ruled out of first T20I against South Africa, Smriti Mandhana to lead
Vice-captain Smriti Mandhana will lead the Indian Women’s team in the first T20I against South Africa on Saturday as regular skipper Harmanpreet Kaur has been ruled out with a hip strain.
Kaur suffered a hip-flexor injury during the fifth ODI against South Africa, which forced her to retire hurt on 30 from 55 balls. Despite ODI skipper Mithali Raj’s unbeaten 79, India lost the final ODI by five wickets and conceded the series 1-4.
At a virtual press conference on Friday, Smriti Mandhana confirmed that Kaur won't feature in the first T20I game.
"She (Harmanpreet Kaur) has been ruled out of tomorrow's game and the rest of the update about the injury will be given by the medical team and the team management soon," said Mandhana.
The confirmation comes after Indian women's team coach WV Raman's earlier statement that Kaur's injury did not look serious and that she might play in the T20I series.
India were hugely disappointing in the ODI series. After being hammered by eight wickets in the series opener, they recovered to clinch the second match by nine wickets. However, South Africa were completely dominant after that, winning the last three matches by six runs (D/L method), seven wickets, and five wickets respectively.
"Important to leave the past behind" - Smriti Mandhana
Admitting that the entire team is hugely disappointed with the outcome of the ODI series, Smriti Mandhana stressed that it is important to put the past behind and look ahead.
"We all were really disappointed with the way the ODI series went, but in cricket it's really important to leave the past behind and we have a lot of fresh faces coming in, so definitely half of the team will not be thinking about the ODI series. And even the rest of us will try to forget the ODI series and now focus on the T20Is because it is a different ball game. We will try to forget what happened in the ODIs and go with a fresh mind in the T20Is," said Mandhana.
Smriti Mandhana also said that the team has had a discussion on what went wrong for them in the ODIs and how they can improve going forward.
"As a team, we had the discussion after the match, we spoke about what went wrong in the series and what the positives we had, and we had a good discussion. I think those kinds of discussions are very important going forward. We had two days rest, we had a good practice session yesterday and today also we are just going to practice. I'm sure that the ODI series will be used as motivation," Smriti Mandhana added.
The first T20I of the three-match series will be played in Lucknow on Saturday. The remaining two games will be held on March 21 and March 23.