Harmanpreet Kaur, the captain of the Indian women’s cricket team, unveiled the team’s new ODI jersey with BCCI secretary Jay Shah at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai on Friday. The new avatars display the Indian tricolor with great prominence on the shoulders for pride and in unity. The jersey will be first worn for the three-match ODI series against the West Indies, starting in Vadodara from December 22.
Harmanpreet said at the event: “The new look is pretty exciting. “It’s an honor that we unveil the jersey today. I am really happy with the design, especially the design of the tricolor on the shoulders looks beautiful. This is special, it is an Indian jersey, and whatever work it takes to reach here is put in.” I hope fans, this jersey, wear this with pride and feel proud.”
Before the home series, the Harmanpreet-commanded team will play a three-match ODI series in Australia from December 5 to 11. The team needs to join forces and flow together well before they meet the West Indies series and this series will be a stepping stone for the same.
“The unveiling of this jersey also serves to honour the growing prominence of women’s cricket in India. It may have been the players who played the games day after day, but as Harmanpreet pointed out wearing the Team India jersey is not an easy task and it instils pride not only in players, even older fans.
We’d be curious to see how it would look in person as the Indian men’s cricket team will wear the revised ODI jersey two months from now during their series against England, commencing February 6. This timeline reiterates how the Indian women’s cricket team was crucial to debuting this kind of symbolic dress.
The newly designed jersey is not just an indication of the BCCI’s commitment to promoting cricket as a unified drive transcending sexes, it is also a celebration of the national identity. For Harmanpreet and her team, the jersey is more than an apparel, it is a celebration of the perseverance, determination and hopes of women cricketers in a sport which was a bastion for men till recent years.
With the Indian women’s cricket team steadily approaching its apex and gaining visibility, such jersey unveilings reaffirm their World Stage importance. The team will surely look to make a statement while donning the new tricolor inspired kit ahead of tough matches in Australia and at home.