The third season of the Women's Premier League is not far away, and it comes about eight months before the ODI World Cup later this year in India. In this interview, India and Mumbai Indians captain Harmanpreet Kaur talks about the growth of the women's game in India since the inception of the WPL, the gap it is filling in Indian cricket, how India is preparing players for the big tournaments, and more.
First of all, how do you look back on the first two seasons of the WPL, and what are your expectations from the third season?
A lot of domestic players performed well in the first season, and some of them got an opportunity in international cricket. In the second season we got a few more players. [Ahead of the third] season, the domestic players have worked very hard, and we saw there was a lot of competition even in the auction. Some players have been bought at very good prices. It was very exciting and interesting to see the benchmark these players have set, and they have worked hard after that. This season all teams are well balanced, a lot of good players have come in. I'm expecting a lot of good matches, like we saw in the last two seasons.
What were the highlights from the first two seasons for you?
For me, it was good to see the way we won some matches which looked one-sided at some point, and we were down, but we turned things around and won. We created a lot of memories, and this season also we'll try to do that.
What was more difficult - bringing a new team together to win the first title or trying to defend that title in the second season, when there were certain expectations from you?
We did some good things consistently in the first season, but the second was a little up and down for us. We couldn't play good cricket throughout the season, and we tried to come back in the end. The second season was more challenging, so keeping those things in mind we have worked and prepared for this season, made changes in the side. Hopefully, this season we'll try to cover all bases which we didn't the last time, and play better cricket.
In the Eliminator last season, it was a narrow defeat for your team and you said after the game that the rest of the batters couldn't take the team over the line in the chase. How do you coach that ability in younger players, given you cannot really replicate such pressure situations in the nets?
See, you can gain experience only over time, it's not going to happen after just one or two games or situations. Our top five to six batters are all international players, whether overseas or Indian, but after that we have mainly domestic-level players, and they have reached here after performing well in that level.
We try and train them in open nets, give them match situations in practice so that they know how to manage such pressure situations. We try to keep all these things in mind while training, but match experience is something totally different, which you can only gain over time. For this season we have worked and chatted about how to improve as a team, how to improve our game, and we're going to use the remaining days to improve our side and be prepared for different kinds of situations to do better this year.
Out of the five captains we have seen in the WPL - although Alyssa Healy is not fit this time - three have been overseas players. Do you think more Indian players should be given captaincy in this league?
Every franchise has its own thinking and plans, and all those things are not in our control. Ideally I would want more Indian players to be encouraged and given responsibility. I'm glad I got the opportunity [to lead MI]. Here I try to help the Indian players as much as I can, and I also work with the overseas players to try and improve our game. So this is a great opportunity to gel together and become better cricketers.
If Indian players got to be captains in the WPL while working with the international players in their team, they would have improved as cricketers as well. Somewhere the franchises have to show a little more trust in Indian players, give them an opportunity and push them forward because this is the platform for it, and to improve Indian cricket. For example, when I was playing WBBL or Hundred, I was also helping my team captains there. So if franchises do this, our Indian players can get some help and things can be a lot better.
During the WPL last year India's head coach Amol Muzumdar said that India was trying to build a pool of fast bowlers from the WPL. But so far the girls who have come up from the WPL and gone on to play for India are mostly spinners. How do you plan to go about this when more spinners come up through the system?
Fast bowling is such a department where you can never have enough players. Their workload is very high, and we play back-to-back cricket, so the chances of injuries are high. Our plan is to try and get as many fast bowlers as possible.
If we talk about Indian cricket, then we mostly get to see spinners come through the ranks because that's how the pitches have been here, and spinners get more wickets here, and that's why they get more chances to play. But we're trying to change that mindset in Indian cricket - especially in women's cricket - [saying] don't pick players only on the basis of performances, and also keep in mind what the team requirements are. This is one thing we're working on and there have been camps at the NCA for fast bowlers. See, every team wants to win and it's common that you will pick match-winners in your team and they're often spinners in Indian conditions. That's one area where the pacers miss out on, so we call them to NCA, train them, and this season we've also seen a lot of pacers being picked, and I hope they do well, which will be great for us in international cricket.
This year the ODI World Cup is in India so the focus will be on the spinners again. But it's a different format, unlike last year when the WPL was played a few months before the T20 World Cup. Despite that, will you be keeping an eye on the young Indian players in other teams too, who might get a chance to play in the World Cup?
Yes, definitely, because I believe that if someone is doing well at this level then she has some quality in her. Yes, the format is totally different but if a player reaches this level [WPL] and can handle the pressure here, then you can handle pressure anywhere. We play all formats but the common thread is, can you handle the pressure at this level or not? So if we come across players who are able to handle themselves well at this level and make their team win, then why not? They should get a chance to do well for the country too.
We have seen the T20 game evolve a lot in recent years. Have you ever had to sit down and think that you need to tweak or change your captaincy style a little to keep up with the times, and look at how teams like Australia and England have been going about it?
See, every team has its own positives and has its own areas where they have to improve. Our brand of cricket is totally different from how Australia and England play, and there are a lot of things I can't change overnight, and it may not be good also for the players.
At the same time a lot of things have changed in the last two-three years. Earlier we had just one platform, which was domestic cricket, and when we used to get players from there to the Indian team, the captain and even the support staff had to work a lot with them to make them ready for international cricket. It was a huge gap to play international cricket after coming from domestic cricket. To cover that gap we have WPL now for the last couple of years. We picked players from both seasons, and some had been doing well in domestic cricket, but not all of them were great for international cricket.
There have been changes in WPL teams as well over the last couple of years, and this year too they have scouted new players and brought them in. That should help a lot because WPL has filled that gap between international and domestic cricket and because of that, the hard work I, as captain, had to put in along with the support staff to make the players ready for internationals has reduced. Now it's mainly about changing the planning, telling a player her role in the team, whereas earlier it was very different. Earlier you had to give a player more matches to perform, and that could affect the performance of the team. Now, thanks to WPL a lot of things have become easier for us in international cricket.
Do you also see a change in the mindset and attitude of players coming through the WPL because they have better financial resources to work on their strength and conditioning, fitness and diets during the off season?
Definitely. I watched this last domestic season very closely and how each and every player had prepared. The level of our domestic cricket this season was quite good. Until now teams hardly used to score 200-250 in one-dayers, but this time we saw 300-plus totals, and some teams chased those down as well. So WPL has surely set that standard, that if you want to play at the top level, you have to change your game accordingly. When a player gets a WPL contract, she can spend on herself. Earlier domestic cricketers did not earn as much, so we weren't sure how much some players could spend on themselves. Since the WPL has arrived, the franchises have also invested, they are holding camps, players are getting to work with different coaches. Thanks to franchise cricket, the good players stay busy throughout the year, play a good standard of cricket, work with good coaches. All these things have helped players a lot and the game will improve further in the coming years.
In December you said that the Indian team lost some crunch moments in big games because of the "mindset" of individual players. What are you doing about that?
Again, this will also happen over the years. The first thing for that is, a player should get a certain number of matches. It also depends on how many matches a player gets at the district or state level and how often you get those kind of match situations. At the international level, such pressure situations will come again and again. But how often does it happen at the state level? That is also very important. Does the player have the kind of platform where she can train for such things? All these things are very important. Earlier they weren't getting so much importance but right now at the WPL, you are playing a match scenario every day, training in the nets. That makes a difference.
When you're watching on TV, it's very easy to say that things should have been like this or that. It's very important to know: if that player had the experience of playing in that kind of a situation, did she get to do it again and again? In men's cricket we've seen the IPL has been there for more than ten years, so they must have gone through those match situations so many times. But how many times has a girl experienced that? How many times has she succeeded in [those situations], all these things matter. In the next two or three years there will be a lot more cricket, the [WPL] teams will work on their shortcomings. There are matches every day now, so that team will win which will be able to handle such situations better. I'm sure this season will help the players a lot in terms of clearing that hurdle.
Now that we're into the third season of the WPL and we also see a lot of known players going unsold, the level of Indian domestic cricket getting better, is it time to increase the number of teams in the WPL?
We did see a lot of [Indian] players going unsold this season. International players you will get easily but increasing the number of teams will give an opportunity to more state-level players. So Indian cricket will benefit a lot. I think maybe next season we can look to add at least one more team, and maybe in the coming years we can add more. We do have the players [in domestic cricket]. Earlier there used to be thoughts about whether we have enough players or not, maybe we have enough only for two or three teams, but here we have five teams, which can become six soon, and maybe seven in one or two years, and then ten maybe.
It's all about giving opportunity. If you give them chances then job options will open up for players, they will think of becoming full-time cricketers, and then you will see an improvement as well. So right now it's all about opportunities, and then players will come automatically.