Women's T20 World Cup 2024: India Coach Amol Muzumdar Reveals Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur Will Bat at Number 3

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Indian women's cricket team head coach Amol Muzumdar has revealed skipper Harmanpreet Kaur will continue batting at the questionable number 3 position during the Women's T20 World Cup 2024.

Jemimah Rodrigues has often batted at the number 3 position over the years, but since her move to number 4 and 5, the Indian women's cricket team has tested several other players at number 3 in the batting order.

This position had seen a lot of occupants recently as Yastika Bhatia, a frontrunner for the number three spot, was injured during Bangladesh tour. Though now she is part of the T20 World Cup squad, it seems she would have to wait.

Among other occupants for the number three spots were Dayalan Hemalatha, Sajeevan Sajana and Uma Chetry. However, the Indian think-tank has started to use captain Harmanpreet in the role from the warm-up matches.

Coach Mazumdar said the move to promote Harmanpreet is not something that was done just for the warm up matches, but it's something that was decided during the pre-tournament camp.

Ahead of the match, Amol said as quoted by ESPNCricinfo, "Absolutely (If Harmanpreet will play at number three). Not just the warm-up games, but we had already decided back in India, in the camps that happened before we set off for the World Cup.

"We had a lovely camp in Bangalore. We had decided there itself. These pre-World Cup matches absolutely stamped that for us." Harmanpreet made scores of 1 and 10 in the warm up matches coming in at number 3.

By playing Harmanpreet at number 3, India will hope to carry on the good starts provided by the opener Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma, and also look to steady ship if there is an early breakthrough.

The thinking behind the move is to give Harmanpreet some time to settle and maximise on her power game once she gets set as her numbers don't read well batting at four or five in the shortest format. She mostly plays the catch-up role, striking at a poor 94.09 since 2022 in 84 T20I innings.