The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Indian women ready for England

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 12, 2005

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Indian women ready for England

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Indian women's cricket team is geared up for the forthcoming assignment at home against England involving one Test and five one-day internationals. The series begins with a Test in Delhi from Nov. 21 to 24.

"We have a set of dedicated young girls who are determined to maintain the good work they had shown over the last two years. We should win the series against England, which has just beaten Australia. We had beaten England in the World Cup and we know they will be keen to dominate us but the girls are well prepared," declared Shubhangi Kulkarni, former cricketer and current secretary of the Women's Cricket Association of India at a press conference on Wednesday. England's last visit to India was in 2002.

India, which finished runner-up to Australia in the last World Cup, has had a fine run in the last two seasons with victories against New Zealand (4-1 in 2003), West Indies (5-0 in 2004) and Australia (3-4 in 2005).

"We have been preparing well. We have had a few off-season camps and we want to thank Infosys, which has come forward to provide us accommodation and training facilities at their complex. We are grateful to Infosys head Narayan Murthy and Director Mohandas Pai," said Ms. Kulkarni.

The Indian team will have a camp in Jamia Millia, the venue for the Test match.

India has not figured in a Test match for two years now but has managed to play 31 one-day internationals. "Our medium-pacers have trained at the MRF Pace Foundation and have gained from the guidance given by (Dennis) Lillee and (T.A.) Sekhar," Ms. Kulkarni added.

The English team will play a practice game at Meerut against India under-21 that recently toured Pakistan and one more match against India `A' ahead of the one-off Test.

The schedule: Test at New Delhi from Nov. 21 to 24 at Jamia Millia and ODIs at Faridabad (27), Luckow (Dec. 1), Guwahati (Dec. 4), Silchar (Dec. 7) and Kol (Dec. 9).

The team: Mithali Raj, Jaya Sharma, Hemlata Kala, Neetu David, Anjum Chopra, Jhulan Goswami, Amita Sharma, Arundhati Kirkire, Nooshin-al-Khadeer, Reema Malhotra, Karuna Jain, Rumeli Dhar, Asha Rawat, Monica Sumra, S.K. Sravanthi Naidu, Varsha Raffel; Coach: Sudha Shah. Manager: Trupti Bhattacharya.

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