Mithali Raj to lead India in three-match ODI series against Australia:
Opener Mithali Raj will lead a 15-member Indian women’s team in the three-match ODI series against Australia to be held at Vadodara from March 12-18, BCCI said on Tuesday.
“The All-India Women’s Selection Committee has named the India Women’s squad for the Paytm ODI series against Australia Women. The three-match series that will be held in Vadodara is part of the ICC Women’s Championship (2017-2020),” BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary said.
The Indian women’s team had a highly successful tour of South Africa as Mithali led the ODI side to a 2-1 win, while Harmanpreet Kaur guided a young squad to an emphatic 3-1 victory in a five-match T20 International series to complete a rare double. They become the first cricket team to win two formats in the Rainbow nation.
Those victories showed that Indian women’s performance in the ICC ODI World Cup wasn’t a mere flash in pan and the women showed little rustiness even though they played their first series in seven months. In the entire South Africa tour, the biggest positive was winning a T20 series -a format where the Indian women have not done well traditionally.
India will start the three-match series with the first one-dayer on March 12, followed by the second and third game on March 15 and Match 18 respectively at Vadodara. “The ODI series will be followed by the T20I tri-series and the squad for the same will be named later,” BCCI said in a release.
India Women’s ODI squad is as below:
Mithali Raj (Captain), Harmanpreet Kaur (vice-captain), Smriti Mandhana, Punam Raut, Jemimah Rodrigues, Veda Krishnamurthy, Mona Meshram, Sushma Verma (wicket-keeper), Ekta Bisht, Poonam Yadav, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Shikha Pandey, Sukanya Parida, Pooja Vastrakar, Deepti Sharma.
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