WBBL: Smriti Mandhana Contemplating To Skip Big Bash To Remain Fit For National Commitments

India women’s team vice-captain Smriti Mandhana is considering giving the upcoming edition of the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) a skip to manage her workload and to keep herself fit for international commitments. For the 26-year-old, this year started with an ODI tour of New Zealand in February in the lead-up to the ODI World Cup in the same country in March.

That was followed by domestic white-ball tournaments in India in April and May before the Indian team played ODIs and T20Is in Sri Lanka in June-July.

Smriti Mandhana has been in the UK since Commonwealth Games

Later in July and August, India played five T20Is in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham where the Indian eves finished with a silver medal, and Mandhana has been in the UK ever since. First for the Women’s Hundred to represent Southern Brave who finished runners-up and then for the international white-ball games against England, which started with a T20I series on September 10.

“I think more than the mental part, it’s about managing a little bit of physical part,” Mandhana said in a press conference from Derby. “Definitely I’ll be thinking about pulling out of WBBL because I don’t want to miss out on playing for India or having any niggles when I play for India because I want to give my 100% when I play international cricket. So definitely I’ll be thinking about playing or pulling out of Big Bash.”

Smriti Mandhan is upbeat about the frequency of games in women’s cricket

Mandhana also highlighted that she wasn’t really complaining about the volume of cricket she’s had to play because this is the kind of schedule women cricketers have wanted for years.

“I have been on the road for a while now. Post the one-day World Cup, I have been on the road with the domestic and the tournaments you mentioned [the Sri Lanka tour, the Commonwealth Games, the Women’s Hundred]. I just try to tell myself that because of Covid we haven’t really played a lot of cricket and we really hoped that we came back and start playing cricket.”

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