India Women cricket star Smriti Mandhana is considering pulling out of the upcoming Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) in order to manage her workload and keep herself fit for international projects.
Smriti began 2022 with an ODI tour of New Zealand in February, right before the 50-over World Cup in the same country in March. She then took part in the domestic tournament and travelled to Sri Lanka for the white-ball series.
Later in July and August, Smriti played a pivotal role for India in their campaign in Commonwealth Games, where the Women in Blue reached the final and finished with a silver medal after losing to Australia.
Since then, the star opener has been in the UK, as she represented Southern Brave in the Women’s Hundred and then joined the India squad for the ongoing white-ball series against England, which started with a T20I leg on September 10.
“I think more than the mental part, it’s about managing a little bit of physical part. 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,” said Smriti in a press conference from Derby.
“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. And now I can’t be complaining that we have a lot of cricket on the platter. As a woman player, we always wanted this sort of schedule for us,” she added.
