It's time to move beyond captain Harmanpreet in T20 cricket: Diana Edulji

Sport can be cruel, especially if age isn’t on your side. Slightly more than eight months back, on the night of Nov 2, at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, Harmanpreet Kaur was the toast of the nation.

She had just captained India to their maiden 50-over World Cup crown, fittingly taking the final catch that sealed India’s historic, memorable 52-run win over South Africa in the summit clash.Harman had played a key, understated part in the triumph-slamming 89 off 88 balls in a 167-run partnership in 156 balls for the third wicket with centurion Jemimah Rodrigues in the semis that helped India score an upset five-wicket win over the mighty Aussies.

It was the sort of knock that can be compared with Gautam Gambhir’s 97 in the 2011 ODI World Cup final against Sri Lanka and Rahul Dravid’s 180 in the unforgettable Eden Test that helped India pull off a heist against Australia-a splendid effort which was overshadowed by once in a lifetime show by Jemimah.

Going into the 2026 T20 World Cup in England, Harmanpreet and Jemimah spoke about the team being hungry to win more trophies. Well, things haven’t panned out like that!Pressure has been mounting on the 37-year-old Harmanpreet after the Women-in-Blue's exit before the knockout stage of the T20 World Cup, though the selectors have shown faith in Harmanpreet by retaining her as India’s captain for the Asian Games in Japan in Sept.

India lost to Australia by six wickets in their must-win final league game at Lord's on Sunday to crash out of the tournament. They also lost to South Africa earlier, by the same margin at Old Trafford in Manchester. India recorded comfortable wins over weaker sides like Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Netherlands, but losses to South Africa and Australia hurt their chances.Harmanpreet has now captained India to back-to-back early exits in T20 World Cups.

There have been questions on Harman's own form and her strike rate in the T20 format- she made 141 runs in five [email protected], at a strike rate of 131.77, with one fifty in the 2026 T20 World Cup. While she did come into her own with a blistering 27-ball 56 not out against Australia, Harmanpreet made scores of 36 off 35 balls against Pakistan, 12 off nine balls at Leeds against The Netherlands, 24 off 22 balls against South Africa and 13 not out off 14 balls versus Bangladesh, playing mostly percentage cricket.After the loss to Australia, India's head coach Amol Muzumdar was asked about Harmanpreet's future, and he said he would like to see her continue as skipper. “It's up to the selectors to decide the captain. I think, yes, my short and sweet answer would be yes,” said Muzumdar when asked whether he would like Harmanpreet to continue as the captain."However, calls for a transition in the Indian women’s team’s captaincy are growing by the day.“See, to be very frank, yes, it is definitely time to move on from Harman as the captain in T20 cricket. I feel that now we should concentrate on having two different women’s teams, with different captains. A few players can play all the formats, but not everybody. It's taxing for the players to play in all the formats. That factor is coming in the way of our girls’ fitness, fielding, everything. Take it on a war footing, identify players who can be T20 players, take them into the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence and train them there,” former India women’s team captain Diana Edulji, who was a member of the Committee of Administrators that ran the BCCI from 2018-19, tells TOI.“We have to segregate players, and it's not working this way, because it is too much of a 50-over game coming into our T20 cricket. I also think that we can even have two different coaches, apart from two different captains for ODIs and T20Is. I think we need a new head to take over with new ideas and better strategies to better India’s women’s cricket,” Edulji recommended.“So, even though Harman is one of my favourite players, I think that it's time to move on and take bold steps like how we took in 2007, when the then selection committee, headed by the then former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar, made MS Dhoni India’s captain for the inaugural T20 World Cup out of nowhere, and he worked wonders for the team.We need to get strikers like Bharti Fulmali and Richa (Ghosh), train them only for T20 cricket. Richa, of course, can play 50-over cricket as well. It's been done regularly in men’s cricket, so why can't we implement the same thing in women’s cricket as well? ,” Edulji asserted.Is it time to move on from Harmanpreet in T20Is, or does she still have more to offer? The veteran batter recently expressed her willingness to go on and play in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, for which the Indian women’s team has qualified already.

“I think it's the twilight zone for her. Yes, she did play a good innings in India’s last match of the T20 World Cup, against Australia, but she has to be more consistent.Perhaps, the pressure of captaincy is telling on her. She is putting her for ‘safety valve’ first, thinking of the team too much and not being able to play her natural, attacking game freely. When she does that, Harman is unstoppable,” Edulji felt.Like in the case of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in men’s cricket, the age factor and the need to plan for the future can’t be ignored in Harmanpreet’s case either, even though there is a tremendous lack of depth in Indian women’s cricket, compared to men’s cricket.In case of WODI cricket, the need for planning is imperative because Harmanpreet will be touching 40 when the 2029 Women’s ODI World Cup arrives. “I think (she deserves) one more chance in that format to go in as the captain of the defending champions,” Edulji said.‘Need to find pacers, increase size of boundaries, in WPL, ask stars to play in domestic tournaments’The former India left-arm spinner felt that India also needed to find somebody who would be able to fill the big shoes of legendary fast bowler Jhulan Goswami. “We need to really find somebody to the calibre of Jhulan. We’ve to put our pacers through rigorous training, so that they can bowl four overs minimum, even if it is at a stretch.

It’s most important for us to discover quality pacers,” Edulj asserted.She also stressed the need for India’s top, star players to feature in domestic cricket, something that has been made mandatory in the case of India men’s cricket, thanks to the efforts of India’s men’s chief selector Ajit Agarkar.“Our top players should play in the women’s domestic circuit, because that will help our young women’s cricketers, who will get to play besides them, like how it has helped the men.

All the star women’s cricketers should be asked to play at least one domestic tournament. If that means that they’ve to skip a lucrative overseas T20 league, then that's okay,” she outlined. “When it comes to the Women’s Premier League, we need to improve the size of the boundaries, and make it at par with international women’s cricket.

There’s no point in our girls hitting boundaries easily, and then struggling to clear the field in international cricket,” Edulj recommended.“We need to concentrate on improving the small, basic things-have separate camps for fielding and catching, bowling and batting. We can, maybe, even have a specialised wicketkeepers’ camp, because at the moment, we just have one second wicketkeeper, Yastika Bhatia, who is most of the time unfit. So, it's very difficult because just playing her in the XI. Her presence didn’t benefit us in the 2026 T20 World Cup. She hardly did much with the bat (scored 41 runs in four matches).

She didn't get anything. So, these are the small, small things which we need to look into. And I'm sure we can bounce back from the setback,” Edulji explained.“More than the defeat against Australia, it was the loss to South Africa that hurt us. That was a game we shouldn't have lost at any cost. The BCCI should look to take advice to improve the performance of the Indian women’s team from former India players,” she concluded.