"Really excited to be part of the Commonwealth for the first time," Smriti Mandhana

The debut of women’s cricket at the Commonwealth Games is now only a sleep away as live action in the T20 format unfolds tomorrow at 11 AM local time from Edgbaston with a rich cricketing rivalry in the making that between Australia and India.

In The Quint’s recent release, elegant Indian opener, Smriti Mandhana was interviewed by Abhimanyu Sen where she spoke on how they (Team India), as a side are treating the Games, on the Australian challenge that’s, doesn’t like one to her and also spoke about her wish to watch other sports live.

Smriti Mandhana on how is India treating the games, like is it just another tournament or the dynamic changes said, “No, I think we are all really excited to be part of the Commonwealth for the first time and women’s cricket to be in Commonwealth is something we didn’t really expect and to have it I think we are all really happy it happened.”

Indian women’s cricket team’s vice-captain @mandhana_smriti speaks to @abhimanyusen about the team making their debut at a multi-sports event, the excitement around it and the Aussies they face in their opening match.
Read more here: https://t.co/ymOTidd0Uz pic.twitter.com/VnevjTmL9B

— The Quint (@TheQuint) July 28, 2022

She further stretched on how them being a newbie aren’t sure of what to expect at the Games with there being other sporting events as well.

Smriti Mandhana on India’s opener against Australia said, “Well, I think we’ve done pretty well against them in the past in T20I’s and also the first match we played in 2020 we won so, yea I don’t think we’ll look at it as we can’t beat them sort of thing. We’ll go with a mindset, we’ve beaten them.”

Mandhana then went on to stress how in T20Is it is about a day and a side performance on the given day. She concluded by saying, “We’ll go out to play good cricket and if it’s our day we play good cricket, we can beat anyone.”

Speaking about other Games and top athletes she would like to watch live, Smriti Mandhana said, “All of the sports, it’ll be pretty cool to watch live and I don’t know how many opportunities we are going to get. But really excited to meet all the athletes going to the Commonwealth Games.” She concluded by remembering conversations they had with other sporting athletes and how good it was speaking on various aspects.

GROUP A : India, Australia, Pakistan, Barbados

GROUP B : England, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka