Ahead of India's second encounter in the ICC Women's World T20 in the Caribbean versus Pakistan on Sunday, November 11, the extremely wonderful Smriti Mandhana has said that she is striving to bring out her best in the all-important clash against neighbouring arch-rivals.
Ever pleasing and beautiful with her delightful strokeplay, Smriti couldn't quite get going in the campaign opener and India's 34-run win over New Zealand but is determined to set things right this time.
“I want to give my 100 percent in every match, that’s the only aim I have," she said, "Because if I think about expectations, I won’t be able to perform, which I didn’t do in the last match," affirming, "So it’s better for me not to put pressure on myself and just enjoy the game,"
Reflecting back at Harmanpreet Kaur led side's fantastic start to the tournament, Smiriti felt, “From every win, we have to take our points out. The Powerplay – I don’t think we got the kind of start we expect our batters to give. Personally, I didn’t bat the way I do."
“From the bowlers’ point of view, we could have restricted them below 150 (New Zealand scored 160/9 in reply to India’s 194/5) – that would have been great for us. Those are the things we’ll be working on in our next game,” she asserted.
Looking forward to the tussle with a side they've been beaten by in the 2012 and 2016 edition of the marquee event but are ranked 5th to Pakistan's 7th at the moment, the left-hander expressed, “We have done our research on the Pakistan team, but there’s no single player, we have done research on all 15 players. So the way we played yesterday (against New Zealand), we’d like to put up the same show tomorrow,”
“We came quite early to the West Indies, and we played three warm-up matches before getting into the last game. All the batters and bowlers know the conditions really well, and I think we have acclimatised to the conditions really well,” she further emphasized, “Before coming to the World T20, we discussed that we have to take it one match at a time. Yesterday was a good win for us, but it’s the past now. We cannot really think about it,” and signed off.
(Inputs from CricketNext)
