'Happy to have improved though in a lot of areas' - Harmanpreet Kaur draws positive from home T20I series loss against Australia

After India Women’s 1-4 defeat at the hands of Australia in the just-concluded home T20I series, skipper Harmanpreet Kaur has said that they have got to learn a lot of things from this setback. At the same time, she also admitted that her team was just not good enough to stop the Aussies in the final game which eventually turned out to be a one-sided affair.

Spin all-rounder Deepti Sharma had kept the Indian women's hopes alive with a valiant half-century in the middle-order. However, it was already too late by then and all she could do from that point was to reduce the margin of defeat.

I think we were really good in the first 10-12 overs: Harmanpreet Kaur

"I think we were really good in the first 10-12 overs. We know the kind of power they have in their game, unfortunately we were not able to stop them. Lot of learnings for us," said Harmanpreet Kaur after the match.

"We knew the type of cricket they play, happy to have improved though in a lot of areas. Lot of things we learnt from them, the way they were clearing the boundaries - that is something we had like to bring in,” she added.

"Self-belief has been the biggest positive in this series. We have a month off now where we'd like to train hard before the World Cup,” Kaur further added.

India had Australia on the mat at 67/4 in the 10^th over before a match-winning unbroken 129-run fifth wicket stand between Ashleigh Gardner (66*) and Grace Harris (64*) powered the visitors to a stiff total of 196/4. In reply, the Women in Blue were never in the run chase as their momentum was derailed with wickets falling at regular intervals.

At one point, India were staring at a humiliating defeat before Deepti Sharma made an impact scoring 53 runs off 34 balls. She was dismissed on the final ball of the contest and the hosts were all out for 142 to go down by 54 runs.