Head Coach Amol Muzumdar Discusses India's Strategic Mindset for the Women's T20 World Cup 2024

With the much awaited October start of the T20 Women's World Cup, everyone is focused on the exciting action. On Friday, October 4, 2024, the favourites, the India Women's squad, will begin their campaign against New Zealand Women's. In what appears to be an entertaining competition, cricket fans are keenly expecting this battle of giants.

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India Women's coach Amol Muzumdar on team’s mental readiness for the T20 World Cup 2024 

Amol Muzumdar, the coach of India's women's cricket team, has revealed observations on the squad's mental readiness for the forthcoming 2024 Women's T20 World Cup , set to take place in the UAE from October 3 to October 20. During their training camps at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru, he saw that the players participated in long conversations with sports psychologist Mugdha Bavare.

Particularly in important ICC events where they have often struggled in knockout rounds, the performance of the Indian women's team under duress has come under close examination. They are strong competitors, but they have not yet won a World Cup championship; they have only twice finished as runners-up in the ODI format and lost to Australia in the 2020 T20 World Cup final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The fact that India’s men’s team won the ICC T20 World Cup this year adds more pressure and is a major motivation for women to bring the trophy to India. 

The squad wants to clear previous errors as they get ready for the UAE event. At a pre-departure news conference on September 24, Muzumdar highlighted the mental techniques the Women in Blue had been using to improve their preparedness for the upcoming difficulties. According to Cricbuzz, Amol Muzumdar said: 

"We had a camp where we did not touch skills. In that we tried to introduce the psychologist. That is an area we would like to tap into. I was pretty happy with the results, what we had by the end of the camp. There were certain things that we tried to address. Mugdha Bavare was with us and she's been fantastic with the group and she continues to be there."

"We did a lot of fitness and fielding in the first camp; the entire 15 days were delegated to that aspect of the game. This was specifically done for those two areas where the skills weren't touched," the Indian coach asserted."The next camp was just the skill camp where we focused not just on the net session but we also had almost 5 games in 10 days time. So if you ask for game time, we have ticked that box. And we played some very competitive games," 

Mugdha Bavare, a psychologist, will accompany the Indian women's squad to the 2024 T20 World Cup in the UAE. On October 4 India is scheduled to start their campaign against New Zealand in Dubai.

Referring to the many preparation camps housed at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru, head coach Amol Muzumdar said, "We have ticked that box when it comes to game time," In addition to fitness, these workouts stressed not only fielding but also important match practice. Muzumdar said the team has addressed all important areas and expressed his faith in their readiness.

Last year, India played Australia in a closely fought game in the semifinal of the 2023 Women's T20 World Cup in South Africa, ultimately losing by only five runs at Newlands in Cape Town.

Squad: Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Smriti Mandhana (vc), Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh (wk), Yastika Bhatia (wk), Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy, Renuka Singh, Dayalan Hemalatha, Asha Sobhana, Radha Yadav, Shreyanka Patil, Sajana Sajeevan

Travelling reserves: Uma Chetry (wk), Tanuja Kanwer, Saima Thakor

Non-Travelling Reserves: Raghvi Bist, Priya Mishra.