There has been a big change in the leadership of the Indian women's cricket team. Harmanpreet Kaur has left the command of Team India. Harmanpreet took this decision on Tuesday (6 October). A few hours later, the reins of the team were handed over to Smriti Mandhana. This was not a shocking day for Indian women's cricket, but it was the need of the hour.
When Team India won the ODI World Cup title last year under the captaincy of Harmanpreet, there were speculations that she would leave the chair for Smriti but she continued to captain. This year, the Indian team was out of the group stage of the T20 World Cup, which increased a lot of pressure on Harmanpreet.
He helped Team India win titles in the Asia Cup and Asian Games, but considering the team's ability, it was not such a big achievement that should be celebrated too much and his captaincy should continue. In such a situation, seeing the right time, Harmanpreet left her post. However, questions are still being raised whether he has delayed in taking this decision? This is because factionalism in the team has gone too far.
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Smriti was disappointed at not getting captaincy
The Indian team ended the ICC title drought by winning the ODI World Cup on home soil last year. After this the selectors kept Harmanpreet as the captain, due to which Smriti was disappointed. Recently, Smriti had expressed her readiness to captain India in an interview and after winning the gold medal in the Asian Games, she had said that India should aim to win even bigger tournaments.
India won the ODI World Cup but after poor performance in two consecutive T20 World Cups, questions were raised on Harmanpreet's captaincy but the selectors did not make any changes then. Here Smriti was continuously doing wonders under her captaincy. She made Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) champions in the Women's Premier League (WPL) twice. She was scoring runs with the bat too but Harmanpreet was not ready to back down.
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There was a rift regarding captaincy
After the review meeting with BCCI, Harmanpreet has decided to step down from the captaincy. 37 year old Harmanpreet was told by BCCI that a change in leadership is now necessary, after which she herself decided to step down from the captaincy. But by then the rift between him and Smriti had become clear.
The difference of opinion between Harmanpreet and Smriti regarding captaincy had become a thorny issue, whereas both of them used to get along very well earlier. For some time, both were not agreeing on many matters and due to this, the uneasiness in the dressing room was clearly visible.
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What next for Harmanpreet?
Women's cricket does not have to face as much scrutiny as the men's team, but this is not the first lapse on the part of the selectors regarding leadership. When Harmanpreet took over the ODI captaincy from Mithali after the World Cup 2022, the relations between the two legendary players were going through a very bad phase. This created factionalism in the team.
Now Harmanpreet wants to continue playing as a player for the next two-three years and in such a situation, it will be interesting to see whether she and Smriti are able to leave behind the old differences in the interest of the team or not. Harmanpreet has not been in form recently. Now the expectations from him as a specialist batsman in the team are sure to increase and to retain his place in the Indian team, he will have to improve the level of his game significantly.