'Really excited to play T20 World Cup': India's teenage sensation Shafali Verma

India's prodigy Shafali Verma has said that the women's cricket team is well prepared for the Women's T20 World Cup with a heady mix of youth and experience in the side, as they get ready to take on hosts Australia in the tournament opener in Sydney on Friday.

'We are well-prepared for the challenge'

"I am really excited to play in the T20 World Cup. The team is backed by good experience and we are well-prepared for the challenge," said the 16-year old batswoman who made her T20 debut last year. Ahead of the World Cup opener, India will hope that their top order of Verma and Smriti Mandhana comes good as their tweaked middle-order has failed to deliver in the recent months. 

Shafali rewrote history when she broke Sachin Tendulkar's 30-year record and became the youngest Indian to score a half-century. This, she achieved when she was only 15 years and 285 days, when she hit 73 off 49 against West Indies.

The Indian women's cricket team captain Harmanpreet Kaur on Thursday said her side will target consistent collective efforts instead of relying on just a couple of players to deliver when the team takes on Australia in the T20 World  Cup. The current side's average age is 22.8 and Kaur expects the youngsters to make a mark against the defending champions, who have clinched the trophy four times.

'Need to come up together'

"If you want to do well as a team, you need to come up together and do well for the side," she said on the eve of the match. "Through past tournaments, we have learnt that you cannot depend on just one or two players to win the game for you," she added.

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The Indian team's reliance on the big-hitting Smriti Mandhana and Kaur to do the job with the bat has been criticised most recently during the tri-series against Australia and England. "If you want to win a big tournament like the World Cup, you have to come up as a team and that's what we're looking to do," Kaur said. She further said that with sprightly teenagers like Jemimah Rodrigues and Shafali Verma in the ranks, the team is "mentally very fresh".

India have failed to reach the final in any of the six previous editions of the tournament. They reached the semifinal two years ago, the third time they made it to the knockout stages. India is placed in Group A with Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

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(With agency inputs)