Indian women’s team pacer Shikha Pandey feels it would be unfair to blame only the batters for their ongoing struggles in the UK as they need to get into a ‘better rhythm’ as a team. Having already lost the ODI series, India will be aiming to win the dead rubber on Saturday to gain some momentum ahead of the T20 series.
Barring skipper Mithali Raj and young opener Shafali Verma, the batters have struggled and have not posted enough runs for the bowlers to defend. “I wouldn’t say batting is the main concern. I can give you a player’s perspective, when I get into a game, we think about all the three aspects of the game together, so if the batters cannot really get us runs, it is us as the bowlers, bowling unit, we need to fight hard and back the batters,” said Pandey ahead of the final ODI here.
“So, I wouldn’t say that just that one department of the game is lagging, it is probably, if we can get all the three (departments) together, and the day we have all the three departments of the game going well for us, we will be doing well.
“I would say together as a team we need to get into a better rhythm,” she maintained.
Terming Harmanpreet Kaur and Smirti Mandhana as “world class players”, Pandey backed the two batters to come good in the third ODI.
“We all know how good batters they are. It is just one innings that they need to get under the belt and we are all backing them and I am sure in the next few games, or in the next game itself they both will be back and help the team to win the game,” she said.