Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Newly appointed India women’s captain Smriti Mandhana paid tribute to outgoing skipper Harmanpreet Kaur on Wednesday, hours after a report claimed that the two senior players had not been seeing eye to eye over the captaincy. Smriti took to Instagram to acknowledge Harmanpreet’s decade-long leadership of the Indian team, saying she hoped the two could continue to bring success to the country together.
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“It’s been a pleasure playing with you for so many years,” Smriti wrote.
“Ten years of your leadership have been fantastic and together, we will strive to bring many more laurels for our nation,” she added.
Smriti Mandhana’s message came after the BCCI appointed her as India’s captain across all three formats, bringing an end to Harmanpreet’s tenure as the team’s leader.
The timing of the post was significant, with a PTI report earlier claiming that differences over the captaincy had created unease between the two players. A team source was quoted as saying that the pair had “not been seeing eye to eye for a while now”.
The report also said Harmanpreet wanted to continue leading India in Tests and ODIs, but the BCCI conveyed to her that it was looking for a change of guard across formats.
Harmanpreet took over as India’s full-time T20I captain in 2016 and became the ODI and Test captain six years later. Under her leadership, India won their maiden ODI World Cup last year and recently secured a second successive Asian Games gold medal in the T20 format.
India had also finished with a silver medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games under Harmanpreet.
The 37-year-old is widely regarded as one of the leading figures in Indian women’s cricket and has been at the centre of the team’s rise across formats. However, the team’s results in T20 cricket had also raised questions over the leadership. India made early exits from successive T20 World Cups, even as they ended their long wait for an ICC trophy by winning the ODI World Cup at home last year.
Mandhana had also expressed her readiness to take over the captaincy in a recent interview. After India won gold at the Asian Games, she said the team should set its sights on winning bigger tournaments. The captaincy issue was subsequently discussed during the BCCI review meeting in Guwahati, chaired by board secretary Devajit Saikia, where Harmanpreet was informed that a change of guard was likely.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
