Mandhana will skip Big Bash to give her best for India

The Harmanpreet Kaur-led Indian team lost the opening game by nine wickets at Chester-le-Street last Saturday. They managed just 132-7 in 20 overs in a one-sided affair

There are players who quit international cricket to play in various T20 Leagues. However, Indian women’s team vice-captain Smriti Mandhana, 26, is thinking of pulling out of one—the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL)—to concentrate on national duty. 

“Definitely, I’ll be thinking about pulling out of WBBL because I don’t want to miss out on playing for India or having niggles when I play for India. I want to give my 100 per cent when I play international cricket,” Mandhana said during a virtual press conference from Derby on Monday.

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Busy schedule 

However, the stylish left-handed batter, who has scored 2,215 runs in 93 T20Is, made it clear that she is not complaining about the busy schedule. “I have been on the road for a while now. Post the one-day World Cup, I have been on the road with domestic and [other] tournaments [Sri Lanka tour, Commonwealth Games and Women’s The Hundred]. Because of COVID, we haven’t really played a lot of cricket and we hoped that we’d come back and started playing cricket. Now, I can’t be complaining that we have a lot of cricket on the plate. We always wanted this sort of schedule for us. I’m really happy to be playing so much cricket,” Mandhana said on the eve of today’s  second T20I in the three-match series.

The Harmanpreet Kaur-led Indian team lost the opening game by nine wickets at Chester-le-Street last Saturday. They managed just 132-7 in 20 overs in a one-sided affair. 

Batting failures

Mandhana felt the batters must capitalise in the last eight overs to post totals around 160. “The way world cricket is going in T20s, I think 160 [runs] is somewhere we really aim to go, but it depends a lot on how the pitch will play tomorrow [Tuesday].

“As a batting unit, we have not been batting well from the 12 to 20th over. Those are areas we want to address as a team,” she remarked. 

Also Read: ICC adds Smriti Mandhana to its "100 per cent Cricket Superstars" list

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