Former coach Raman optimistic of women’s team making the semifinals

The Indian women’s cricket team is in a spot of bother, after incurring back-to-back losses to South Africa and Australia, at the ongoing ICC World Cup. But, former head coach W.V. Raman is of the opinion that the team can bounce back by winning its remaining three league games and reach the semifinals.

“They can still go on to win the remaining [league] games (versus England, New Zealand and Bangladesh). Just because they have suffered reverses in a couple of games doesn’t mean their campaign is over. This team is good enough to bounce back from setbacks and win the championship,” the 60-year-old told The Hindu on the sidelines of former India cricketer R. Ashwin being felicitated by his alma mater, PSBB (K.K. Nagar) at its campus here on Tuesday.

The five-bowler theory adopted by the team has come in for criticism in certain quarters, but Raman backed the management.

“The challenge would be to see if they can disturb the batting combination by bolstering the bowling attack. Then they will have to also see if they have the very good sixth bowling option that they are looking for. It’s not an easy call to make and you can’t really resort to knee-jerk reactions of simply altering your plans because you lost a couple of games,” he said.

Raman praised the all-rounders, spinners and the lower-order batters while acknowledging the crucial contributions of Richa Ghosh. “Maybe Jemimah (Rodrigues) and Harmanpreet (Kaur) could have contributed a bit more than they’ve done so far. They’re experienced enough and are dangerous players when they get going,” he said.

Raman said Ashwin’s curious mind was one of the reasons for his success. “He would look at how to circumvent that problem, how to solve and overcome it,” he said.

Earlier, Ashwin said that ‘PSBB had laid the foundation for his cricketing journey’.