The vice-captain of the Indian women’s cricket team, Smriti Mandhana, has refused to call Australia a big team and has said that she doesn’t want to hail a particular team as a big team and make them feel good about themselves even before the match.
Indian women’s cricket team is all set to take part in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham where they have to face Australia first before they lock horns with the arch-rivals Pakistan and a not so fancied side Barbados.
While the game against Australia is much built up as compared to the other two, Smriti Mandhana made it absolutely clear that for her and her team, the Barbados match is as important as the match against Australia.
Mandhana also insisted that the Indian team hasn’t set a goal for themselves to just end up at the podium and be happy with whatever medal they get. The team is eyeing the gold medal because the players want the Indian flag to fly the highest.
Talking about the recent Olympic games where the javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra became only the second Indian athlete to win a gold medal at the Olympics, Mandhana said it was a “goosebumps” moment for her and she wants to replicate that with her team at the Commonwealth games.
We have played Australia in the first game of big tournaments in the past too: Smriti Mandhana
The reason why the question related to the Australian team was asked to Smriti Mandhana was that Australia currently holds the world title in both 20-over and 50-over cricket and they are regarded as the best side in the world in women’s cricket by quite some margin.
But, Mandhana, while addressing the pre-tournament press conference, said that it’s not that India is playing their first match against Australia in a big tournament for the first time. It has happened before and the team is not particularly thinking about that one game only.
