Smriti Mandhana: I’ll think about pulling out of WBBL because I don’t want to miss out on playing for India

Smriti Mandhana, the Indian cricket team deputy, talked about dealing with her responsibility to keep away from any injuries and niggles, and indicated the chance of pulling out of the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) to ensure she doesn’t miss out on playing for India.

Smriti Mandhana, the Indian cricket team deputy, talked about dealing with her responsibility to keep away from any injuries and niggles, and indicated the chance of pulling out of the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) to ensure she doesn’t miss out on playing for India.

Mandhana, who has been playing a lot of cricket in recent times, said managing the physical part becomes significant thinking about the volume of cricket.

“I have been on the road for a while now post the World Cup. But I have just tried to tell myself that because of COVID we couldn’t play much cricket. We hoped we could come back and play a lot of cricket. I can’t be complaining that we don’t have a lot of cricket on the platter,”

Mandhana said at an online press conference on Monday (September 12).

“As women cricketers, we always wanted this kind of a schedule for us. But more than the mental part, it’s about managing the physical part. I’ll think about pulling out of WBBL because I don’t want to miss out playing for India because of any niggles,”

she said.

Mandhana said mega events like The Hundred and WBBL have helped England and Australia with growing their bench strength and hoped that India could do the same in the future.

“The Hundred and the Big Bash have been amazing tournaments for their respective countries, as well as for the overseas players. We also get to learn a lot, but these tournaments also add a lot to their bench strength. If something similar happens to Indian cricket, that will help a lot,”

she said.

“As a team, we didn’t play the brand of cricket we have played in the last few months, so definitely we were disappointed (after the loss in the first T20I), but we just took it as one bad day and we know that we have to come back harder and match the standards we have set for ourselves and our team,”

said Mandhana.

India’s skipper Harmanpreet Kaur brought up after the first game that the circumstances at the Riverside Ground in Chester-le-Street weren’t adequately reasonable to play as there were a few wet patches on the field.

Mandhana echoed her skipper:

“The conditions were not really up to the mark to play an international cricket match, there were a lot of wet patches on the field, so there was a risk of injuries. But as a team we won’t use that as an excuse, we also didn’t play the kind of cricket we have been playing. So we need to come back stronger in the second match.”