The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Saturday announced the national women's squads for the upcoming series against South Africa. (More Cricket News)
The series will comprise five ODIs and three T20Is and will be played at Lucknow’s Bharat Ratna Shree Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana International Stadium. Veteran Mithali Raj will lead the team in the ODIs, while her deputy Harmanpreet Kaur has been named the captain of the T20I side.
It will mark the return of Indian women after almost 12 months. Both teams will be arriving in Lucknow on February 25 and will undergo a six-day quarantine.
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The ODIs, all of them day-games, will be played on March 7, 9, 12, 14 and 17 and will be followed by the T20 matches on March 20, 21 and 24 with the first two games to be played under lights.
India Women’s squad for ODI series: Mithali Raj (Captain), Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, Punam Raut, Priya Punia, Yastika Bhatia, Harmanpreet Kaur (vice-captain), D. Hemalatha, Deepti Sharma, Sushma Verma (wicket-keeper), Swetha Verma (wicket-keeper), Radha Yadav, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Jhulan Goswami, Mansi Joshi, Poonam Yadav, C. Prathyusha, Monica Patel
India Women’s T20I squad: Harmanpreet Kaur (Captain), Smriti Mandhana (vice-captain), Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh, Harleen Deol, Sushma Verma (wicket-keeper), Nuzhat Parveen (wicket-keeper), Ayushi Soni, Arundhati Reddy, Radha Yadav, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Poonam Yadav, Mansi Joshi, Monica Patel, C. Prathyusha, Simran Dil Bahadur.
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Meanwhile, women's domestic cricket season will begin with a 50-over tournament from March 11. The tournament will be held across six venues -- Surat, Rajkot, Jaipur, Indore, Chennai and Bengaluru.
The teams will have to assemble at their respective venues by March 4 and will need to have three COVID-19 negative results after tests on March 4, 6 and 8, before entering the respective bio-bubbles.
Each of the five elite groups will have six teams each, while the plate group has seven.
The five elite-group toppers qualify directly for the knockouts, while the three next-best-placed teams in terms of points earned will join them. The last of these qualifiers will play a pre-quarter-final against the topper of the plate group to get into the final eight.
The quarter-finals will be held on March 29, and semi-finals on April 1. The final will be played on April 4. The venues for the knockouts will be announced later.
Bengal are defending champions.
