The India women's cricket team is all set to host Zimbabwe in six white-ball matches, starting October 16 in Raipur. The series marks the beginning of the leadership era for Smriti Mandhana, who has taken over as India's full-time all-format captain following the resignation of Harmanpreet Kaur.
Addressing the media on Wednesday (October 14), Mandhana emphasized using the upcoming three T20Is against Zimbabwe to establish clear performance metrics and fine-tune team strategies in the shortest format ahead of the inaugural Women's Champions Trophy in February 2027.
"The first bilateral (series) with Zimbabwe, I think, it is very exciting. It is our first time playing with them, Sometimes, playing with Zimbabwe and all the Associate nations, it feels like you can learn a lot from them as well because they enjoy playing their cricket," Mandhana told reporters on Wednesday (October 14).
"Sometimes, we get into a lot of things professionally. You can learn a lot from them. But again, we have six T20 matches before the Champions Trophy as an Indian team so, we will look to set standards as an Indian team (as to) how do we approach the next three months leading up to the Champions Trophy," she added.
Despite India’s considerable success in recent international cricket, Mandhana called for improvement in the T20I format.
"We have won the World Cup in the last one-and-a-half-year but there were few things which we needed to work in the T20 format especially," she stated.
The southpaw noted that the team’s biggest asset right now is the crop of incoming players who have performed exceptionally well. She chose to focus on these positive additions rather than explicitly discussing team weaknesses at the start of her captaincy stint.
"But I would say our strength has been the players who have come in. They have done extremely well. On the first day, I wouldn't really want to talk about weaknesses in a way," Mandhana said.
"There is a lot of things we need to work on. We need a lot of things to get in place. But I think today is the day to talk about good and positive stuff," she remarked.
