Harmanpreet and Smriti aim for World Cup glory at home citing “fearless cricket” as the reason for the team’s success.
Harmanpreet and Mandhana hope India ‘break the barrier’ for maiden World Cup glory.
Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana, India’s senior combination, are counting on the team’s recent performance, group confidence, and modified preparation techniques to “break the barrier” and win the country’s first ODI Women’s World Cup.
On September 30, the eight-team 2025 tournament will begin with an opening match between India and Sri Lanka. In 2022, India did not get to the semifinals in the most recent ODI World Cup. Their best performance at an ODI World Cup to date has been finishing second, twice, under Mithali Raj in 2005 and 2017. With home advantage and recent success on their side, they will aim to advance even further.
“Playing in front of a home crowd, that is always special, and hopefully, this time we will give our 100% and try to break that barrier which all Indian fans and we are waiting for,” Harmanpreet said at an ICC event in Mumbai to start the 50-day countdown for the World Cup.
What are India’s confidence levels like right now heading into the World Cup? “To be honest, very high – because the amount of cricket we have played in the last couple of years, that has really given us a lot of confidence. And touchwood, the way we are playing [for] the last couple of years, we just want to continue with that. I think it is all about mindset and [the] fearless cricket we have been playing,” Harmanpreet said.
“We were not surprised with the results [in England] because we knew the kind of preparation we have done,” Harmanpreet said. “We knew that we can do this easily. I think we have been working very hard for it, but I think at the same time, we kept things very simple, and we knew that we can easily win any series or any tournament. We were only talking about how we can win, how we can improve ourselves. So, for us, it was not like we have done something great. [The result] was because of our routines and we want to keep doing the same things, again and again.”
Mandhana, the vice-captain in white-ball formats, said the recent team form was a result of their off-field preparations.
“The amount of training we are doing and the efforts we are putting in our training camps, that is finally giving us a result and hopefully this World Cup will be very special for us,” she said. “In the last one-and-a-half month in UK, I just felt that a lot of things. Even off the field was very right about the team, in terms of how everyone came together and we, as a team, are really big on it in terms [of how] we are working hard here each day, day in, day out.