The team will be led by captain Harmanpreet Kaur with Smriti Mandhana as her deputy. Harleen Deol, Kashvee Gautam, Sneh Rana, Saika Ishaque and Pooja Vastrakar are in the standby list.
the BCCI on Friday announced the women’s team which will take part in the upcoming Hangzhou Asian Games, scheduled to start from September 23 and end on October 8. The women’s cricket competition will take place from September 19-28 in the T20 format.
The team will be led by captain Harmanpreet Kaur with Smriti Mandhana as her deputy. Harleen Deol, Kashvee Gautam, Sneh Rana, Saika Ishaque and Pooja Vastrakar are in the standby list.
Cricket was part of two editions of the Asiad, in 2010 and 2014, but India did not field a team. After being left out of the 2018 Asiad in Jakarta, cricket has returned to the programme for the Hangzhou Games, which were supposed to be held last year but were postponed due to China’s zero-Covid policy.
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In June, the Indian Express had reported that the BCCI will field their men’s and women’s teams at the Asian Games.
The men’s team will be a B squad because the main team will be in the midst of the 50-over World Cup to be played at home.
Earlier, the Indian board had cited prior commitments as the reason for not entering the men’s and women’s teams for the continental mega event. “We have entries in all sports except one – cricket (team) isn’t going,” India’s chef de mission for the Asian Games, Bhupender Bajwa had told The Indian Express earlier. “They said they are preoccupied. We sent around 3-4 emails to them but when we had to send entries to the organisers, they said they won’t go.”
This is not the first time the BCCI will be fielding two national teams. In 1998, one Indian team competed at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur while another faced Pakistan in the Sahara Cup. More recently, in 2021, Shikhar Dhawan led a second-string Indian team for a series in Sri Lanka whereas another team, captained by Virat Kohli, was in the UK ahead of a Test series against England.
Meanwhile, India has already sent squads for big sports such as shooting, boxing, archery and badminton have already been announced by the respective national sports federations (NSFs).
Team: Harmanpreet Kaur (C), Smriti Mandhana (VC), Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh (wk), Amanjot Kaur, Devika Vaidya, Anjali Sarvani, Titas Sadhu, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Minnu Mani, Kanika Ahuja, Uma Chetry (wk), Anusha Bareddy
Standby list of players: Harleen Deol, Kashvee Gautam, Sneh Rana, Saika Ishaque, Pooja Vastrakar
First published on: 14-07-2023 at 22:57 IST
