India Women Squad vs South Africa: Shikha Pandey axed, Shafali Verma not in ODIs

Veteran medium pacer Shikha Pandey was on Saturday dropped from India’s ODI and T20 squads that can tackle South African girls in a twin collection beginning March 7.
The most debatable choice by the Neetu David-led choice committee, nonetheless, was the exclusion of teenage batting sensation Shafali Verma within the ODI squad which has plodders like skipper Mithali Raj and Punam Raut, whose strike-rates have come underneath the scanner repeatedly.
With 19 T20 Internationals underneath her belt and a tremendous Women’s T20 World Cup final 12 months, Shafali is a box-office cricketer.
“It will be interesting to know whether skipper Mithali Raj, who herself loves to bat at the top of the order and consumes more deliveries than permissible, had at all wanted Shafali in the ODI squad,” a senior BCCI official, who sounded miffed with the transfer, advised PTI on situation of anonymity.
“Her absence means that India lack firepower save Harmanpreet and Smriti. We lost out on a big hitter,” he added.The selectors, although, have included a whole lot of rookies primarily based on their final season’s home performances in addition to A and B group collection towards Bangladesh.
Rookie keeper-batsman Shwetha Verma, together with the seasoned Sushma Verma, are the 2 keepers in each codecs.
Pandey’s exclusion was extra to do with the selectors wanting to take a look at the tempo bowling bench energy and rookie right-arm medium pacers C Prathyusha and Monica Patel had been included in each the squads.
There can also be younger seamer Simran Dil Bahadur, who’s a part of the T20 Internationals group.
Left-arm spinner Yastika Bhatia has made method for Ekta Bisht within the 50-over squad whereas Veda Krishnamurthy, after a chronic lean part, has been dropped from each squads.
All matches will likely be performed at Lucknow’s Bharat Ratna Shree Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana International Stadium.
The ODIs will likely be performed between March 7-17 whereas the three T20 Internationals will likely be held from March 20-23.
India Women’s ODI Squad: Mithali Raj (Captain), Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, Punam Raut, Priya Punia, Yastika Bhatia, Harmanpreet Kaur (vice-captain), D. Hemalatha, Deepti Sharma, Sushma Verma (wicket-keeper), Swetha Verma (wicket-keeper), Radha Yadav, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Jhulan Goswami, Mansi Joshi, Poonam Yadav, C. Prathyusha, Monica Patel
India Women’s T20I Squad: Harmanpreet Kaur (Captain), Smriti Mandhana (vice-captain), Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh, Harleen Deol, Sushma Verma (wicket-keeper), Nuzhat Parveen (wicket-keeper), Ayushi Soni, Arundhati Reddy, Radha Yadav, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Poonam Yadav, Mansi Joshi, Monica Patel, C. Prathyusha, Simran Dil Bahadur.