Raipur, Oct 14 Newly-appointed India captain Smriti Mandhana on Wednesday said her team will look to make the most of the six T20Is ahead of the inaugural edition of the Women’s Champions Trophy early next year.
Mandhana is set to lead India in her first assignment as India’s full-time captain when the hosts take on Zimbabwe in a three-match T20I series starting here on Friday, followed by three ODIs.
The Indian team, meanwhile, will be in New Delhi on Thursday along with the men’s team for a felicitation event with Prime Minister Narendra Modi after winning the gold medal in the Asian Games.
“The first bilateral (series) with Zimbabwe, I think, it is very exciting. It is our first time playing with them,” Mandhana told reporters here.
“Sometimes, playing with Zimbabwe and all the Associate nations, it feels like you can learn a lot from them as well because they enjoy playing their cricket.”
“Sometimes, we get into a lot of things professionally. You can learn a lot from them. But again, we have 6 T20 matches before the Champions Trophy as an Indian team so, we will look to set standards as an Indian team (as to) how do we approach the next 3 months leading up to the Champions Trophy,” Mandhana added.
Mandhana said there are a lot of areas of improvement for the Indian team in the shortest format.
“We have won the World Cup in the last one-and-a-half-year but there were few things which we needed to work in the T20 format especially,” she said.
“But I would say our strength has been the players who have come in. They have done extremely well. On the first day, I wouldn’t really want to talk about weaknesses in a way.”
“There is a lot of things we need to work on. We need a lot of things to get in place. But I think today is the day to talk about good and positive stuff,” Mandhana said.
(PTI News)
