By B Shrikant Birmingham 6th August : The members of the Indian women’s cricket team were given the chance to experience of the activities and life in the athletes village at a multi-disciplinary event that was hosted by the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) hosted them as the latest members of the Commonwealth Games family.
The cricket team played together with the women’s and men’s hockey teams as well as other athletes like sprinter Hima Das at the University of Birmingham Commonwealth Games Village on the evening of August 4th.
The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games has five designated Athletes Villages with one in London.The Indian cricket team, as the other teams of cricket is staying in one of them: Park Regis, a hotel in Birmingham.
They aren’t able to take in the energy, colour and excitement that one normally associates with the life of an athlete village during an event that is multi-sport such as the Commonwealth Games and are, in general being left out of the chance to connect with players from different sports who are in the facility.The IOA explained the reasons to host the cricket team.
“Given women’s cricket will be being introduced at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, the IOA honoring the spirit of inclusiveness it represents has hosted to the Indian cricket team to join an interactivity session with the women’s and men’s hockey teams, para-swimmer Niranjan Mukundan, and Team India’s Chef de Mission Rajesh Bhandari and General Team Manager Maninder Pal Singh,” the IOA informed.
At the beginning of the evening Bhandari celebrated Manpreet, Savita Punia and Harmanpreet Kaur as captains of the three teams and Ramesh Powar, head coach of the Indian women’s cricket team.
Sprinter Hima Das joined them later in the evening, and dinner in the dining hall of the University of Birmingham Athletes Village was followed by dinner at the University of Birmingham Athletes Village.
The cricketers also spoke with Indian hockey team goalkeepers PR Sreejesh and Manpreet Singh both of whom are seniors of the hockey team regarding how to handle pressure in difficult situations and with Mukundan too.
The Indian cricket team concluded the evening with visiting the Entertainment Zone in the Village where they played table tennis and observed the long-jumper Murali Sreeshankar win silver on the television and then shaken hands with some of their hockey colleagues.
At the time, IOA Secretary General Rajeev Mehta stated, “The IOA and Commonwealth Games Association (CGA) is happy to have the Indian women’s cricket team member of our community.
The team, as well as women’s cricket in India is on the rise , and it is evident in the acclaim that the women’s team enjoys with the people who are fans of the sport.We are pleased to welcome their participation in the Commonwealth Games set-up and hope they enjoyed their time in the Athletes Village prior to the start of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games cricket semifinals.We wish them all the very best of luck for the knockouts.”
According to IOA acting President Anil Khanna: “We at the IOA and the CGA are determined to ensure that every new athlete who competes for India under our banners is welcomed.As women’s cricket made its first appearance at the Commonwealth Games, it was necessary for us to give our women cricketers a sense of the Athletes Village as, in the same way every cricket team is missing this one aspect since they are in hotels.We are happy that they had the chance to spend time to interact with the hockey players from our team, para swimmers Niranjan and Hima Das and enjoyed dinner with them.”
Team India Chef de Mission Rajesh Bhandari noted the camaraderie flourishing between the athletes.”I was ecstatic to see camaraderie flourish between the athletes in the shortest amount of period of time.A lot of our hockey players had a conversation with our cricketers in the Entertainment Zone which is why it was wonderful to see them interacting with one another so well.The women cricketers have become an integral part of the CGA family and it was only right that we hosted this trip and allowed them to be able to interact with certain of the athletes in the Athletes Village setup.”
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