Committee of Administrators member and former India captain Diana Edulji on Monday defended the exclusion of Mithali Raj from the women\u2019s World T20 semi-final, saying the team management\u2019s decision cannot be questioned.<\/p>\n
Mithali\u2019s omission from the playing eleven against England triggered a controversy and it intensified after India were handed an eight-wicket drubbing, shattering their dreams of a maiden ICC title.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think too much is being made out of it. The management (captain Harmanpreet Kaur, coach Ramesh Powar, vice captain Smriti Mandhana and selector Sudha Shah) made the decision of not changing a winning combination and that backfired. If India had won the game, I am sure nobody would have questioned their decision,\u201d Edulji, a former India captain, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t be questioning the team eleven. Another example is of Krunal Pandya, who was thrashed in the first T20 but bounced back strongly yesterday. These things happen in the game,\u201d she said referring to the men\u2019s team\u2019s six-wicket win in the third T20I against Australia on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Mithali, who had missed the last pool game against eventual champions Australia as she was recovering from a knee injury, was available for the crucial game against England. In the two innings Mithali played in the tournament, she scored 51 and 56, against Ireland and Pakistan respectively.<\/p>\n
Harmanpreet defended the decision to keep Mithali out of the eleven, saying \u201cwhatever we decided, we decided for the team\u201d. However, she was slammed by the latter\u2019s manager Annisha Gupta, who claimed that the 35-year-old was a victim of politics and favouritism.<\/p>\n
Edulji said Gupta\u2019s comments were uncalled for. \u201cAs I see it. It was just a bad day for India. The batting failed and when England were chasing, the dew made it tougher for the bowlers. The performance was unexpected, especially after the big win against Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish they had a bad game like that earlier in the competition and not in the all-important semi-final. The girls now have a New Zealand tour coming up, they must move on from this loss and work harder on their game,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Edulji also made it clear that no CoA meeting has been planned yet with captain Harmanpreet and Mithali. \u201cIt was a selection matter. There is no need for the CoA to intervene. If they want to have a word with us, then that can be looked at. We only step in when it is required, like it was when Tushar Arothe stepped down,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Committee of Administrators member and former India captain Diana Edulji on Monday defended the exclusion of Mithali Raj from the women\u2019s World T20 semi-final, saying the team management\u2019s decision cannot be questioned. Mithali\u2019s omission from the playing eleven against England triggered a controversy and it intensified after India were handed an eight-wicket drubbing, shattering their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48314,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48312\/revisions\/48314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}