'Definitely Missing A Bowling Coach' - Admits Harmanpreet Kaur After Loss To Australia
India won the second T20I but lost the third match by 21 runs on Wednesday.
The Indian women’s cricket team lost the third T20I against Australia to concede a 1-2 lead in the five-match series. Post that, the Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said that her team is missing a bowling coach. Though she is happy with the way her bowlers are taking responsibility.
The Women in Blue are still looking for a full-time bowling coach as Ramesh Powar was shifted to National Cricket Academy and Hrishikesh Kanitkar was named the batting coach.
India won the second T20I but lost the third match by 21 runs on Wednesday.
"I know we are definitely missing a bowling coach but our bowlers are taking charge," Harmanpreet said in the post-match press conference.
"They are participants in the meetings. They have full responsibility and today (it was) all their plans and they were leading the way, I was just supporting them in the middle."
Ahead of the Australia series, the Indian speedster Pooja Vastrakar's injury has increased the team's concern.
"(We are missing) Pooja for sure. On these tracks you need a medium pacer," Harmanpreet said.
"Definitely when you bowl back-to-back spin bowling, it allows opposition batters to settle easily. We are definitely missing Pooja because she has the experience of death-overs bowling. We tried Meghna in the first two games but it didn't click."
Since Pooja is injured, Renuka Singh is heading the pace attack. She has played 30 international matches so far.
"Renuka has the experience because she has done well in the past six-seven months and has got good results. Whenever we set plans for pace bowlers she takes the lead and our video analysts give us a lot of information," Harmanpreet said.
"Talking about spin bowlers, almost all spinners have played a lot of T20 cricket like Deepti, Radha, Rajeshwari. Devika (Vaidya) is new to the team but she also has experience of international cricket and has done a lot of homework with respect to international cricket."
"The way we bowled in the powerplay, especially Renuka and Anjali (was commendable). They were swinging the ball and bowled according to the plan. They were not giving easy runs to the batters," the India skipper said.