Womens' Asia Cup: Jemimah Rodrigues, Dayalan Hemalatha, Harmanpreet Kaur Solving India's No 3 Conundrum

The upcoming Women's Asia Cup in Dambulla, Sri Lanka, serves as a big chance for India to firmly nail their plans ahead of the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in October. India come into the competition as the defending champions and apart from eyeing to defend their title, they also have the number three conundrum and got to seal ideal batting position for Jemimah Rodrigues. Jemimah used to be India's number three batter in T20Is, before a back injury forced her to miss T20I tour of Bangladesh in April-May.

After that, all-rounder Dayalan Hemalatha, armed with a her strong bottom-hand and solid big-hitting skills against spinners, has occupied number three slot.

So who between Jemimah and Hemalatha would become the number three batter for India in the Asia Cup? Anjum Chopra, the former India captain, believes it will be fair if Jemimah is back to batting at one-down.

“What I think is India are looking to identify, what is the best combination, including number three position. Solving will happen when everything is already set. But the way probably it is looking now is the Indian team will play with this particular combination (from Chennai T20Is), which will be tested in the Asia Cup.”

“Jemi can also open, so it becomes nicer if she bats at three. As she is skillful enough to open the batting, that's why she becomes such an important cog in the wheel. But it's actually a very difficult situation for her because she then has to prepare to play at all positions,” says Anjum in an exclusive conversation with IANS.

Despite being a number three batter for India in T20Is for a long time, Jemimah displayed great adaptability as a number five batter, scoring an unbeaten 53 off 30 balls in the series opener against South Africa at