Indian Women's Cricket Marred by Politics, Team Selection Not Up to Mark: Former Coach Tushar Arothe
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Indian women’s cricket team has been on the rise for the last four years, but it is the frequent change of the team’s coaches, that is in news most of the time. Once again, WV Raman has been replaced by Ramesh Powar, who had previously coached the team for a short span of time. Former women’s coach Tushar Arothe, who too enjoyed a successful stint with this time, from 2017-2018, talked to Cricketnext, about various aspects that are hampering women’s cricket in India. The former Baroda Ranji player minced no words and admitted that there are a few problems that need to be dealt with, rather quickly. Well, I believe there were over 35 applications for the post. Then, the shortlisted it to eight. I don’t really know what the criteria were or how did they scrutinize the applications. I personally think it is a little unfair on Raman. If you look at his tenure, he took the girls to the final of the T20 World Cup, and most of the other period under him went in lockdown due to Covid-19. So once can’t really judge his tenure. Also, if you’re looking at the South Africa series, these girls were playing a lot of cricket already, but the Indians girls were playing after a year and were rusty. So he had no chance to work with the girls, and there was no camp. So they could have given one more year to WV. Well, we had all heard about the problem between Powar and Mithali Raj during the World Cup in West Indies, 2018. But now it’s a fresh start and now someone who has a stronghold in the team, should intervene and take a stock of the whole situation and make sure that both the parties are on the same page this time around. Whatever happened in the past, we need to forget it here. It is the future of the Indian team we are talking about, here. I mean both need to have the same goal now, which is winning the World Cup, and not lose in the semis or finals.