The Board of Control for Cricket in India has certainly crossed a milestone by bringing in an equal pay policy and hosting its first T20 Women's Premier League (WPL) to give the women’s game a much-needed boost. But the seniors women’s team is yet to get a long-term head coach post the 2018 T20 World Cup.
It has been almost six months since Ramesh Powar, who took charge of the team in May 2021, was shifted to the National Cricket Academy (NCA) and batting coach Hrishikesh Kanitkar was given interim charge of the team going into the T20 World Cup in South Africa in February and Australia’s Troy Cooley was made the bowling coach.
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But the process to appoint a head coach started only over a month ago on May 2 when BCCI invited applications for the post. The Cricket Advisory Committee, of Sulakshana Naik, Ashok Malhotra and Jatin Paranjape, was supposed to shortlist the candidates and send the list to BCCI for interviews.
Till now, there is no clarity on the process but the names of former Mumbai batter Amol Muzumdar and former England’s World Cup-winning skipper Charlotte Edwards are doing the rounds. Muzumdar hasn’t coached a women’s team before but Edwards was the coach of the inaugural WPL-winning Mumbai Indians side. It remains to be seen if former India spinner Nooshin Al Khadeer throws her hat in the ring. Khadeer was the coach of the India women’s U-19 team that won the World Cup in South Africa just before the women’s 2023 T20 World Cup and the U-23 team that won the rain-affected ACC Emerging Women’s Asia Cup in Hong Kong a couple of days back.
{{/usCountry}}Till now, there is no clarity on the process but the names of former Mumbai batter Amol Muzumdar and former England’s World Cup-winning skipper Charlotte Edwards are doing the rounds. Muzumdar hasn’t coached a women’s team before but Edwards was the coach of the inaugural WPL-winning Mumbai Indians side. It remains to be seen if former India spinner Nooshin Al Khadeer throws her hat in the ring. Khadeer was the coach of the India women’s U-19 team that won the World Cup in South Africa just before the women’s 2023 T20 World Cup and the U-23 team that won the rain-affected ACC Emerging Women’s Asia Cup in Hong Kong a couple of days back.
{{/usCountry}}The India women’s team is expected to tour Bangladesh next month and the players are currently preparing at the NCA in Bengaluru for over a month. The Bangladesh tour will have three ODIs and an equal number of T20Is. There are two ICC events lined up over the next two years —the T20 World Cup 2024 and the ODI World Cup 2025.