- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
AUSTRALIA women’s cricket captain Meg Lanning on Wednesday (6) said she is expecting opponents India to give them a really tough challenge in the upcoming three-match T20 international series starting Thursday (7).
Currently, the hosts are leading the multi-format series 6-4 and the visitors would need to win all the three T20I matches to register a victory in the series.
ALSO READ: Australia-India one-off pink-ball Test ends in draw
“India has players who can take you down and also really good depth in their squad. We were expecting a really tough challenge from them and we’ve certainly got that.
It’s a good test for our group. Everyone found the last week of the Test a challenge in different ways. It’s a format we don’t play a lot and have experience in different situations,” ESPNcricinfo quoted Lanning, who led Australia to a 2-1 win the one-day international series but found her team struggle in the drawn one-off Test against the Indians, as saying.
“You have so many unknowns and aren’t really sure how to approach situations if you haven’t been there before. Now coming into the T20 format it’s something we know reasonably well and everyone is pretty clear on what their role is,” she added.
Lanning further added that Australia’s all-rounders are pretty good with the bat and that gives her team a bit of luxury. “Balance is important, having that variety with the ball is important and matching that with conditions. We feel like we have really good depth in those areas, just need to make sure that we get those selections right,” the Singapore-born batter said.
“It was a challenge in the twilight period, but not really an excuse and I was the prime culprit in dropping a lot of those. They were ones we should have taken. Certainly looking to be better in the field, even in the ODIs we didn’t quite nail it. It’s something we pride ourselves on,” Lanning, 29, said.
India will be led by Harmanpreet Kaur, who missed the ODIs and the Test due to injury, in the T20Is.
All the three games will be played at the Metricon Stadium in Queensland on Thursday, Saturday (9) and Sunday (10).
