India's group stage exit from the 2022 ICC Women's ODI World Cup has been... encouraging, with the cricket and fan community electing to focus on the positive from the campaign, rather than what was indeed a poor outing for Mithali Raj and her team.
Why though?
What’s so great about the team that reached the finals of the last 2 ICC tournaments - the T20 and ODI World Cups, not even getting past the group stage this time? These are not young children who need to be bubble wrapped and protected, these are some of the world’s best cricketers.
Give them the respect of criticism when it’s due.
Winning just three matches out of seven is just not good enough. Getting knocked out in the group stage when the team boasts of stars like Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur, Deepti Sharma, Shafali Verma — is just not what’s expected of these stars.
Unless… you of course take into account that this team is managed by the BCCI and had only one year to prepare for a World Cup, that came after 5 years.
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