BCCI announces Indian women's cricket squad for 2022 Commonwealth Games

With barely two weeks left for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games to begin, the BCCI has finally announced the squad for the Indian women's cricket team who will be heading to the UK to take part in the Games, for the first time.

The Women's T20 International format will debut at the Commonwealth Games and India has been placed in Group A with Australia, Barbados, and Pakistan, making it quite the challenging affair. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka, England, New Zealand, and South Africa are placed in Group B.

The Indian women's squad will be led by captain Harmanpreet Kaur and vice-captain Smriti Mandhana and features 15 members on the team overall with 3 players on standby as well, as India gets ready to hunt for medals at the Commonwealth Games in cricket for the first time.

Wicket-keeper Taniya Bhatia, who has an unimpressive strike rate of under-100 in T20 format, was on Monday named in the Indian women's squad for the upcoming Commonwealth Games while dashing batter Richa Ghosh has been put on the stand-by list.

The most notable player to make a comeback to the national fold is all-rounder Sneh Rana, who didn't play in the Sri Lanka series owing to an injury which kept her at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) for rehabilitation.

The Harmanpreet kaur-led team will have converted keeper Yastika Bhatia as the first-choice stumper. Taniya's selection was surprising as the Neetu David-led selection committee has brought back a keeper-batter, who has in all totalled 166 runs in 22 innings at an average of 9.72 with a strike rate of 94.

The casualty was Bengal's Richa Ghosh, who has scored 191 runs in 14 games at a strike rate of 112 plus but is now on the reserves list as she has fallen off the radar in recent times.

Veteran leg-spinner Poonam Yadav, who is no longer a certainty in the squad, is also in the standby list along with seamer Simran Dil Bahadur. The three pacers in the list are Meghna Singh, Renuka Thakur and Pooja Vastrakar.

India will play Australia on July 29, followed by match against Pakistan on July 31 and Barbados (August 3). The top two teams from the respective pools will progress to the semi-finals.

Full Indian women's cricket team squad for 2022 Commonwealth Games:

Harmanpreet Kaur - Captain

Smriti Mandhana - Vice-Captain

Shafali Verma

S. Meghana

Taniyaa Bhatia - Wicketkeeper

Yastika Bhatia - Wicketkeeper

Deepti Sharma

Rajeshwari Gayakwad

Pooja Vastrakar

Meghna Singh

Renuka Thakur

Jemimah Rodrigues

Radha Yadav

Harleen Deol

Sneh Rana

Standby: Simran Bahadur, Richa Ghosh, Poonam Yadav