Motivated to do well in Women's T20 World Cup on seeing U19 World Cup: Harmanpreet Kaur

With only a week until the start of the Women's T20 World Cup in South Africa, India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said her team is motivated to do well in the competition after seeing the U19 team triumph in the inaugural Women's U19 T20 World Cup.

On January 29, the Shafali Verma-led side defeated England by seven wickets in the final of the inaugural ICC U19 Women's T20 World Cup in Potchefstroom, ending India's long wait for a first world title in women's cricket.

Shafali and Richa Ghosh have joined the Harmanpreet-led side for the Women's T20 World Cup, which will be held from February 10-26. India most recently reached the final of the 2020 Women's T20 World Cup, which Australia won in front of a raucous MCG crowd.

"We are inspired to do what they have done after watching the U19 World Cup. They have inspired us to succeed; they have done so, but we have not."

"It was a very special moment for all of us, and after watching the U19s, many of the girls back home will also want to play cricket," Harmanpreet said during the Captains' Day event.

India will begin their Women's T20 World Cup campaign against archrival Pakistan on February 12 at Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town. Pakistan captain Bismah Maroof sees the tournament as an opportunity for her team to put itself to the test against other strong teams.

"We've grown as a team over the years, and this tournament gives us another chance to put our skills to the test. We're all fired up and ready to give it our all to produce good results for our team."

In addition to Pakistan, India will compete in the group stage against 2009 champions England, 2016 winners West Indies, and Ireland. India recently faced the West Indies in a tri-series in South Africa, and their captain, Hayley Matthews, believes the competition helped her team adjust to the African country's conditions.

"We've had the tri-series between ourselves, India and South Africa and it was a really great opportunity to be down here and get acclimatized to the conditions and see where we're at with our game as well. A good opportunity for us to get out there in a T20 World Cup in a place we've been quite a lot over the last couple of years."

England captain Heather Knight stressed on how their team isn't being complacent in the group stage of the tournament. "Our job as a team is to play the group games in front of us and to try to get out of the group stages. Everyone starts on the same page, we're pretty clear as a team how we want to go about things and in a T20 World Cup, you don't have much chance to slip up and our sole focus is on that."

Ireland captain Laura Delany discussed how full-time contracts have aided her team's growth and development as an international team. "After we didn't qualify for the last World Cup, cricket in Ireland has changed massively over the last three or four years, and the introduction of full-time contracts has now allowed us to train full-time but also guarantees us games against the best sides in the world, which is the only way we're going to grow and develop as a team."

"We're looking forward to the next few weeks; we know it'll be a difficult challenge, but it's one we welcome."