India are ready to handle WWT20 challenge, says Harmanpreet Kaur

Last year at Lord's, India fell just nine runs short in the final against England, and the experience of playing in the title round at such a big stage should be useful for Harmanpreet Kaur & Co. in the upcoming T20 event.

"We had not played in a World Cup final before last year except Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami (in 2005), but now we do," Harmanpreet pointed out prior to the team’s departure for the West Indies on Saturday, 27 October.

"I think once you experience something, you're able to process better the next time you find yourself in a similar situation. If we would have handled our nerves better, we would have probably won. But we've got to learn a lot from our mistakes.

"I hope we don't repeat our mistakes. If we get a similar chance the next time, we've hopefully handled the situation with a cool mind."

That said, the 15-player squad still includes six new players and they will also be without the service of the retired Goswami.

However, Ramesh Powar, India's new head coach, believes that every single player travelling to the Caribbean has been tested and put in pressure situations recently in the five-match away series against Sri Lanka, which India won 4-0, followed by a 3-0 triumph over Australia in the 'A' series at home.

"We have tried in these eight games to put them under pressure; we changed a lot of things," said Powar. "We put Taniya [Bhatia] under pressure to go and play her shots in the Powerplay, we put Jemi [Jemimah Rodrigues] under pressure. We wanted to replicate these pressure situations, which is important.

"We played with only one seamer and we pushed our spinners into the pressure situations. So it was more or less replicating these kinds of game situations and let them go through that and come out winners. Most of the times, in eight games, they did really well. And that's how we learn. It's not always about talking about pressure. It's about learning through that pressure."

Harmanpreet added that every player is aware of their respective roles in the team, and that sort of understanding will help India execute their plans collectively.

"Right now every player knows their plans, why they're in the team and what we are expecting from them. [It works well] if your teammates know what as a leader or as a team they're expected to do. So, I think, the players understand what they are capable of, which is very important. Only when your players understand this, you are ready to execute."