The Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) named the women’s squad for the upcoming Women’s T20 World Cup in Australia, with no major surprises as the usual suspects like Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana making the cut. 15-year-old Haryana bowler Shefali Verma has retained her place after a string of good performances in the recent bilateral series’ and will be playing her first major global competition come the Women’s T20 World Cup.

Selectors also opted to pick upcoming Bengal batswoman Richa Ghosh, who made a name for herself with some explosive batting in the Challenger Trophy, where she scored 36 off just 26 balls.

The selectors also picked a 16-member squad for a T20 tri-series against Australia and England which is slated to begin from next week. Wicketkeeper-batswoman Nuzhat Parveen from Madhya Pradesh will be the additional representative in that tri-series.

For the World Cup squad, India have the likes of Veda Krishnamurthy, Radha Yadav, Poonam Yadav- all of whom were a part of the squad which finished runners-up in the 2017 Women’s World Cup, losing in a closely contested final against England.

India’s women’s team will, however, be without veteran batswoman Mithali Raj and pace bowler Jhulam Goswami, with both those players announcing their retirement from the shortest format of the game in the recent past.

The women’s World T20 is scheduled to begin from the third week of February, with India’s first game being against hosts Australia. Apart from Australia, neighbouring nations Sri Lanka, Bangladesh will also be in India’s pool at the World T20. The group will be completed by New Zealand, who will be captained by Amy Satterthwaite.

World T20 Squad: Harmanpreet Kaur (captain), Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodriguez, Harleen Deol, Deepti Sharma, Veda Krishnamurthy, Richa Ghosh, Tania Bhatia, Poonam Yadav, Radha Yadav, Rajeshwari Gaikwad, Shikha Pandey, Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy.

Feature image courtesy: AFP / Randy Brooks

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IndiaICC Women's T20 World Cup, 2020