BCCI announce Indian women’s squad for Asian Games; Harmanpreet Kaur set to continue as captain

BCCI announced the Indian women’s squad for the upcoming Asian Games, which is all set to be played in Japan later this year. Snuffing out all the speculations, Harmanpreet Kaur was handed over the captaincy of the side to lead India’s title defence in the Games.

The tournament will be played in September where India will be hopeful of recreating their heroics from the last iteration of the Games after they beat Sri Lanka in the finale to clinch the gold medal. Smriti Mandhana has been named as the deputy to Kaur, with the squad similar to how it looked in the T20 World Cup.

The solitary change to the Indian side has been the inclusion of G Kamalini, who comes in place of Yastika Bhatia.  Shreyanka Patil, who was ruled out of the 2026 T20 World Cup, has been named in the squad but her inclusion to the side will be subjective to her fitness. Apart from Smriti and Shreyanka, three other Royal Challengers are included in the side in the form of Richa Ghosh, Arundhati Reddy and Radha Yadav.

The Asian Games will be played in Japan and starts on September 17th.

India squad: Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Smriti Mandhana (vc), Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh, G. Kamalini, Bharti Fulmali, Sree Charani, Renuka Singh, Kranti Gaud, Arundhati Reddy, Shreyanka Patil (subject to fitness), Radha Yadav, Nandni Sharma