Smriti Mandhana sees silver lining in absence of India women’s team head coach

It has been over six months that the India women’s cricket team haven’t had a head coach. And after having even played a T20 World in February earlier this year in the absence of one, vice-captain Smriti Mandhana believes inputs from different sets of coaching staff was doing the job better.

The last head coach, Ramesh Powar, was sacked in December last year. Although the BCCI was in search of an apt candidate to take on the job for the long term, there hasn’t been any success so far. Domestic stalwart Amol Muzumdar is the frontrunner for the job, according to news agency PTI.

“The BCCI has been hunting for a long-term coach and we will have one soon,” Mandhana said at the pre-match press conference ahead of India’s third ODI against Bangladesh.

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“It’s not a very big thing in terms of players. We want to play the best brand of cricket we can. All the coaching staff that has come in has been really helpful.

“Sometimes it’s an advantage, new coaching staff comes with new tips and new positives. If I take it very positively then its a good thing,” the opener added.

Mandhana believes only the game was important to her side.

“For us as a team, it is not important what is happening around us. How we play our brand of cricket is more important. We will have to wait for the series to finish and see what happens,” she said.

Mandhana, a powerful batter, has been struggling for runs in the ongoing tour of Bangladesh. She managed a total of 52 runs in the three-match T20I series while she made 11 and 36 in the first and second ODIs respectively.

“I have been batting well in the nets and in the matches I have been getting starts. It doesn’t happen very often that I am middling the ball and still not getting runs for the team but I have been working on it.

“The last match for me was pretty positive, the way I was able to get the team off to a decent start but threw my wicket away. It’s more about application.. my batting is going well but application hasn’t been always the way I applied,” Mandhana said.

The India women’s team succumbed to their first-ever ODI loss to Bangladesh in the series opener and Mandhana said the hosts have evolved as a side in the past one year.

“We played them in the Asia Cup last year, they have grown since then. On these sort of wickets their bowling attack is good.

“They have played a very good brand of cricket. They will be coming hard at us so we won’t be taking anything lightly. The deciding factor (for us) has been batting…getting ourselves to a good score will be important. We have to be good in all 3 departments,” Mandhana said.