India suffered a group-stage exit after losing to Australia on Sunday.
The Women in Blue finished third in Group A with six points, missing out on a semifinal spot to Australia and South Africa.
Following a mixed group stage that included wins over Pakistan, the Netherlands, and Bangladesh, alongside a defeat to South Africa, India needed to win their final group match to advance. However, the Harmanpreet Kaur-led side fell short against Australia despite posting a competitive total of 170 runs on the board.
After the campaign-ending loss to Australia, India head coach Amol Muzumdar stated that the decision regarding Harmanpreet’s future as captain rests with the selectors, though he expects her to continue.
“Do you expect Harmanpreet to remain as captain?" Amol was asked during the post-match press conference.
He replied, “It’s up to the selectors to decide the captain. My short and sweet answer would be yes."
Muzumdar minced no words and admitted that the team needs to rethink its T20I strategy.
"We really have to rethink our strategy or our T20 game. We really need to put our heads around what combination we are going to play," he told reporters.
Muzumdar cited poor bowling and fielding as the main reasons for their early exit from the tournament. While the coach was pleased with the batters' positive intent and focus on finding boundaries, he noted that the team could have pushed harder in the Powerplay to build larger cushions.
"If I have to pinpoint on certain things in the entire tournament, I think we really need to think about our bowling and our fielding. We also need to be a little aggressive with the bat, and we could have maybe 15-20 runs as cushion (against Australia)," he said.
Muzumdar felt India's total of 170 was competitive but Australia were too good on the day. "I thought it was a good score, a par score on this pitch. We even got the momentum towards the end of that innings, and I think we carried it on the field as well. It's just that I think at the end of the day, Australia were a better side than us."
He called for patience, insisting the bowling attack will improve drastically given about 18 months of international exposure.
"If you look at our bowling attack, it's been very inexperienced as far as international cricket is concerned. So I've said this before in the previous press conference that give us 18 months and this attack will be a different one."
Amol Muzumdar also mentioned that mid-tournament ankle injury of key off-spinner Shreyanka Patil significantly hurt the team's balance.
"And also, it didn't help Shreyanka not being there. Shreyanka was probably one of our strikers. So it didn't help her missing out on half of the tournament. We really missed her in this game today."