Mithali Raj, who in the eye of the storm that engulfed the Indian Women’s cricket scene in the aftermath of Indian team’s elimination from the ICC Women’s World T20 2018, has been retained in the Indian squad for T20I series against New Zealand.

Harmanpreet Kaur will continue to lead the T20I squad, which sees one change from the 2018 Women’s World T20 squad with Delhi’s Priya Punia replacing an out-of-form Veda Krishnamurthy.

The selection meeting was held in the Capital with BCCI secretary Amitabh Chaudhary and CEO Rahul Johri presiding over the two-hour long meeting. Johri was the representative of the Committee of Administrators (CoA) at the selection meeting.

“There was no debate about Mithali’s position or captaincy during the meeting. She is still in good form in the T20 format. Mithali has only said that she is not going to play in the next T20 World Cup but she hasn’t retired from the format yet. So we had no hesitation in selecting her,” one of the selectors told CricketNext.

“Veda was dropped purely on form and replaced by Priya Punia for the T20s,” she added.

Mithali Raj joined the meeting during the process of selecting the ODI squad for the series, which she continues to lead, with Harmanpreet as her deputy.

The BCCI and the ad-hoc advisory committee of Kapil Dev, Shantha Rangaswamy and Anshuman Gaekwad named former India opener WV Raman as the new coach of the Indian women’s team, bringing an end the tumultuous Ramesh Powar saga.

ODI Squad:
Mithali Raj (Captain), Harmanpreet Kaur, Jemima Rodrigues, Smriti Mandhana, Punam Raut, Deepti Sharma, Tanya Bhatia, D Hemlata, Mona Maheshram, Ekta Bisht, Punam Yadav, Rajeshwari Gaekwad, Jhulan Goswami, Mansi Joshi and Shikha Pandey

T20 Squad:
Harmanpreet Kaur (Captain), Smriti Mandhana, Mithali Raj, Deepti Sharma, Jemima Rodrigues, Anuja Patil, D Hemlata, Mansi Joshi, Shikha Pandey, Tanya Bhatia, Poonam Yadav, Ekta Bisht, Radha Yadav, Arundhati Reddy and Priya Punia

(with inputs from news18.com/cricketnext)