navi Mumbai: Royal Challengers Bengaluru skipper Smriti Mandhana on Thursday said the Indian women’s cricket team is aiming to be the best across formats and the WPL is going to have a major role in this mission after being a key contributor to their maiden ODI World Cup triumph.
Mandhana’s RCB will take on defending champions Mumbai Indians led by India captain Harmanpreet Kaur, in the Women’s Premier League (WPL) opener here at the DY Patil Stadium on Friday. This is the same venue where the national team created history by winning its first global title last November.
“Winning the T20 World Cup would be great,” Mandhana said in a pre-match press joint press conference with Harmanpreet when asked what kind of change in Indian cricket they would want to see hereon.
“We all know that we won the (ODI) World Cup, yes, but there are a lot of things in the team that we need to work on. We really want to say that we are the best team in the world. We still have a lot of things to improve on and I am sure WPL is going to bridge that gap for us,” she added.
Mandhana said the Indian team wants to dominate across formats and WPL is helping them in doing so.
“Whenever we play for India, we always discuss how we want to be the best team in the world. Not for one or two tournaments, but for the whole year. Every WPL is just getting us closer to that,” she said.
Harmanpreet said she’s happy that the Indian team has started to set bigger goals now.
“We are not satisfied with just one World Cup. We have so much cricket coming up (and) every time we go to the field, we want to go with the best mindset — that winning mindset,” Harmanpreet said.
“It is good to see that not only us, but other (new) players are also speaking about how we want to be champions all the time.” agencies