When Harmanpreet Kaur scored that unforgettable World Cup century against Australia in the 2017 semi-final, she not only modified the course of a match but the trajectory of girls’s cricket in India.
India went on to lose the closing to England that yr but girls’s cricket no longer remained a passing pursuit for the average Indian fan.
That dogged zeal to win she infused into the workforce helped them elevate India’s first girls’s World Cup trophy – the same feat that had eluded them in 2017 – in emphatic fashion eight years later.
Less than a yr on, and within weeks of victories in the Asia Cup and the Asian Games, she has relinquished the captaincy, ending an period in which she turned the workforce’s most influential chief and one of the most recognisable figures in the sport.
Star opener Smriti Mandhana, her long-time deputy, has been appointed captain across all codecs.
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Devajit Saikia, coach Amol Muzumdar, Harmanpreet and Mandhana attended the review assembly at which the management change was ratified. The transition, however, was not totally seamless.
Reports recommend the 37-year-old Harmanpreet was prepared to relinquish the T20 captaincy immediately, but was eager to proceed main the facet in One-Day Internationals and Tests so that youthful gamers could benefit from her expertise.
The BCCI, however, was intent on a youthful individual at the helm and opted for the 30-year-old Mandhana.
In some methods, the transfer mirrors the BCCI’s determination to substitute Suryakumar Yadav as captain of the males’s T20 facet shortly after India won the World Cup earlier this yr, with the captaincy passing to Shreyas Iyer.
Harmanpreet’s future as captain had become a subject of intense debate in cricketing circles after India’s below-par efficiency at the T20 World Cup in England a few months in the past.
Her own poor type with the bat amplified issues and prompted the BCCI to think about adjustments that could help the workforce meet the growing challenges of a girls’s recreation that continues to develop quickly around the world.
Approaching her thirty eighth birthday, and after nearly a decade at the helm, Harmanpreet discovered herself under growing scrutiny as her type dipped.
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