Harmanpreet Kaur Identifies Key Issues That Affected Team India in the ODI Whitewash: ‘We Made Too Many Mistakes'

Hobart [Australia]: Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur acknowledged her team's shortcomings in the third and final ODI match of the bilateral series held at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart, where the hosts handed them a big 185-run defeat to clean sweep the series.

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The 36-year-old Indian skipper accepted that her team is 'not playing good cricket' in the ODIs. Speaking during the post-match presentation, Kaur said, “I think overall we didn't play good cricket. In T20, we were doing all the things right and in ODI, we didn't play good cricket. I think that is something which cost us. ODI - it's a long game, and you have to keep doing the right things again and again. I think we kept making too many mistakes.”

India asked Australia to bat first, hoping register a consolidatory win in the final match of the series, but playing her farewell ODI match, Australian captain Alyssa Healy smashed her eighth century in the format to give a super start to the innings.

Beth Mooney also contributed with an unbeaten 106 off 84 balls, which helped Australia set a 410-run target for the visitors.

Acknowledging the Australian cricket team's effort, she said, “Credit goes to the Australian team also because they really played good cricket, and they didn't give us a chance to bounce back. But I think a lot of learning for us, and definitely we will go back and think about how we have to go about in the ODI cricket.”

Chasing a daunting target, the Indian team lost the wicket of their star batter, Smriti Mandhana, in the second over. She couldn't open her account. Pratika Rawal tried to score quickly but lost her wicket to Annabel Sutherland. She made 27 runs off 21 balls.

Jemimah Rodrigues (42 off 29 balls) hit nine boundaries in her short but quick knock.

Wickets kept falling after that, and India failed to set a partnership. Deepti Sharma and Sneh Rana added 63 runs for the eighth wicket, but that was not enough as India lost the match by a big margin of 185 runs.

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Alana King took four wickets, and Georgia Wareham took a couple of wickets to finish the match early.

Now, India will move to Perth, where they are scheduled to play a one-off Test match, starting from March 6.

Reacting to the preparations for the upcoming Test match, she said, “Keeping everybody in a good space of mind is very important. I know we have very little time to prepare, but I think now it's only about believing in yourself and keeping yourself in a good frame of mind and doing the right things for the team.”