India captain Harmanpreet Kaur on Thursday said her team is not singling out any opponent in the Women’s T20 Asia Cup and will instead focus on playing good cricket, while expecting a challenging tournament with the standard of Asian teams improving rapidly. The Asia Cup features India, Pakistan, defending champions Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, hosts UAE, Thailand, Hong Kong China, and Indonesia. The ODI world champions India enter the Women’s T20 Asia Cup as one of the favourites, but Harmanpreet played down the hype surrounding her team’s much-anticipated clash against Pakistan on September 5.
The Indian skipper said her team would not allow external factors to distract it.
All the teams have been doing well and our focus is to play good cricket and not to take any team easily,” Harmanpreet said at the captains’ press conference ahead of the tournament, which begins on Friday. “We are not putting any focus on one particular team, which is going to be tough for us.
“Our main focus is just playing cricket, other than giving focus to the other impact of the game. Harmanpreet did not answer if she would shake hands with her Pakistani counterpart Fatima Sana. “This tournament is very important for us as a team to do well. Especially all the teams, they are the ones in the last two-three years we have seen massive improvement. And whenever we are playing against them, they are not giving anything easy to us. “This is going to be very challenging, but at the same time, our experience will help us. India had a disappointing T20 World Cup campaign, but Harmanpreet believes the experiences gained from past matches will stand the team in good stead.
“Asia Cup is a platform where you can really test yourself and put yourself under a lot of pressure to perform at a level which you expect a lot from your team,” Harmanpreet said.
