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'The Australia tour result was not something which we were expecting but lot of learnings for us.'
Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur backed the Indian women's team to regain confidence in home conditions during the three-match T20I series against the West Indies, following a disappointing T20 World Cup campaign and a 0-3 defeat in Australia.
Having failed to progress beyond the group stage in the T20 World Cup in October, India bounced back with a 2-1 ODI series win against New Zealand at home. However, having suffered a series whitewash in the ODI series in Australia has once again put the Indian team under significant pressure.
"After the World Cup, we played against New Zealand, we did really well in the home conditions and Australia tour result was not something which we were expecting but lot of learnings for us,” Kaur told the media in Mumbai ahead of India's training session ahead of the first T20I against the West Indies, on Saturday.
"In India, whenever we played, we played good cricket, the only (disappointing) thing was the World Cup and then the Australia tour which didn't go according to our plans but apart from that, if I see in this year, we played really good cricket, we won lot of matches in home conditions."
"These things happen and as a team, it's very important for us to stay together and think about all the positives we have done in the past," she said.
Kaur said India's young bowling attack has learned valuable lessons from the experience in Australia.
"Our bowling attack was quite young (in Australia) and for them, it was a great learning playing against such a good team where (they could) see how good players play and how they can improve," she said.
Kaur, however, refused to comment on the exclusion of Shafali Verma for T20Is against West Indies despite the right-handed batter being second highest run-scorer this year.
"I would say, ask the right person. I can only talk about the team, that is here and what things we can do to win this series. Regarding Shefali or any other player... better to ask the right persons,” she replied.
There was very little turnaround time after playing their final T20I in Perth on Wednesday and Kaur acknowledged the scheduling challenges.
"I am not the right person to answer that. You can definitely ask the right person," she said when asked if the scheduling could've been better.
"To be honest, it is difficult because we are coming from Australia and after the game, only within 4-5 hours we left the country and came back to India," she said.
"But as a professional, these things happen and we just want to stay motivated and yesterday was a totally off day. We tried to rest well and tomorrow is another game, so looking forward for that."
Kaur said the team had some good discussions in the flight on the way back from Australia.
"When we were coming back from Australia, we had good talks in the flight because that was the only time when we can talk and think about how we can start this series. We discussed about how we have to go about in this particular series,” she said.
"When you have very less time, it's very difficult to reflect on things which we have done in the past. Staying together is something which is very important and which we have been doing. Whatever is in our hands, we are doing that to turn things around."
Kaur backed Uttarakhand's Nandini Kashyap and Raghvi Bisht, who received their maiden call-ups for this series, to come good.
"Both of them have done really well in the (Senior Women's T20) Challenger Trophy and because of that they have got the opportunity. For them, it's a great platform and I hope they will do really well for the team because if we see, we have very limited girls," she stated.
"Good to see them doing really well in the domestic format and hopefully, they will take the responsibility and start doing well for the country at the international level."