Aus, NZ women's team captains say they have prepared well

Captains of England and New Zealand women's cricket teams for the World T20 today played their cards cautiously and said that they have prepared well to finish on top in the tournament.
Charlotte Edwards, leading the England team which has won the trophy in the inaugural year, said, "Women's cricket has grown massively during the last two years. It is great to see so many teams compete each other today. The World T20 is a challenging tournament. We are looking forward to it and the main thing is that the game has improved rapidly."
Skipper of the New Zealand side, Susie Bates echoed Charlotte's view and said, "Black Caps have won the World Cup and we want to annex the World T20. We have been preparing our team well for this World T20."

"The experience we gained from playing against Australia before coming here was vital. We have made the finals in the earlier World T20 tournaments and we have prepared ourselves well for winning the Cup this time. We have the confidence and momentum to do that," Susie said.
On her being an Olympian and playing in cricket, Susie said, "There are couple of players in women's cricket today who are double internationals having represented their respective countries in International hockey and so on.
"Fortunately I had played both basketball and cricket at highest levels for New Zealand. Probably you have more opportunities in basketball for women than in cricket. But, I am able to be comfortable in cricket so far."

Asked about the difficulties for women's cricket in moving forward, Susie said, "The biggest stumbling block was we were not playing cricket throughout the year unlike men. Women's cricket is now changing. Australia and England have been regularly playing and these are good improvements."

On whether IPL for women is around the corner, the two captains said, "Absolutely, we want to be playing in IPL cricket. IPL is already set in the men's game and I hope the next step is only to introduce it in the women's side."
Talking about viewership, they said, "There has been enormous crowd support and this change has been happening compared to five or ten years before. Viewership has improved drastically. We are hoping to have big crowds in India. We are international cricketers and we are going to see big crowds. We will be attracting more and more people to the game."

On lack of Indian women playing in the women's Big Bash in Australia, Charlotte said, "We want India to play in all international games and compete in as many competitions around the world because they have some high quality players in their team. We want Indians playing in big bash. It is always great to get as many great players as possible.