India captain Harmanpreet Kaur credited new coach Ramesh Powar for his contribution in team building process which has gone a long way in India’s praiseworthy performance in the ongoing ICC Women’s World T20, where they have reached semifinals.
India will meet England in the semifinals in the early hours of Friday morning (India time).
Powar was appointed after Tushar Arothe’s departure under controversial circumstances when some senior members didn’t like erstwhile coach’s training methods and performance dipped after the high of ODI World Cup.
“We have better plans and we can aim bigger now.The self-belief (is different). I can give credit to Ramesh (Powar), because from the time he joined our team, our mindset and approach has totally changed,” Harmanpreet said on the eve of semifinal against England.
The aim will be to carry on with the winning momentum rather than thinking about revenge, said Indian captain.
England had defeated India by nine runs in the in the 50-over World Cup final last year. However, the ‘Women in Blue’ have had a fantastic run in the T20 tournament so far, beating all three opponents in the group stage including Australia.
“We need to live in the present. At present, we’re doing really well, I think. Other than thinking about the past, we just need to think what we need to do in the next game,” she played down on the revenge part.
“We’re taking it as another game. We just need to focus on what we have done well in the last league games and those things we need to just continue now,” Harmanpreet said on the eve of their semi-final.
England captain Heather Knight insisted Friday’s clash will be different to last year’s ODI World Cup.
“We take confidence from the fact that we performed in knockout matches before, but I don’t think it (the 50-over final) counts for anything with the game tomorrow. It’s a different format, different team for India, different captain for them and things like that.”
“It’s all going to be about tomorrow. We know T20 cricket, it’s whoever turns up on the day It’s about us going out and putting on a really strong performance, showing the good things that we’ve done,” she added.
Knight also said her side has noted and worked on how they intend on scoring runs against India’s effective spin attack.
“India have been very effective taking pace off the ball. So we’ll also look to that and how we’re going to go about playing it and how we are going to have our method to score runs.”
