Supernovas skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, having seen her team outperform Velocity and Trailblazers towards this year's Women's T20 challenge title, has said it was pleasantly surprising to have good media attention and fans turn up in large numbers for the event that finished on May 11 in Jaipur.
Kaur struck an unbeaten 46 in the opening game against Smriti Mandhana-led Trailblazers but failed to take Supernovas past the finish line. However, the 30-year-old made up for that in the summit-clash against Velocity with a fine half-century (51 off 37 balls).
"The tournament was organised very well, we didn’t expect that so much crowd is going to turn up to watch women’s IPL games," she told CricketNext. "It was a pleasant surprise. The organisation of the tournament was really good. The great thing was that all three teams performed really well, it is great for the future of women’s cricket in India."
While the likes of Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues and Veda Krishnamurthy have begun also shouldering the responsibility in India's batting unit, Harmanpreet said that the national team still has many facets to improve upon in the game's shortest format at the highest level.
"Strike-rate of the Indian batsmen has been a concern and to address this issue, BCCI has taken the good initiative to start more T20 tournament for women," she added. "It gives more opportunity to young players. In the past, we had very few T20 domestic teams and there is different pressure to play with high strike-rate in international cricket. This way we can improve ourselves from domestic cricket."
On the personal front, Kaur said she is quite pleased with her showing in the tournament.
"I was happy with my performance. It feels great to hit the winning score and I felt really good after the match. The team needed me and it was good to put on a good partnership, so I was happy that I came through."
"Last year has been pretty good for me, the team was performing well both in T20s and ODIs, and I was performing well with the bat as well."
