(Cricket news) After losing the first two ODIs, India now play to avoid a series loss against New Zealand. The women in blue haven't been able to capitalise on the situation in the series so far that is why despite playing well in certain patches they lost the 1st ODI by a huge margin and lost the 2nd 1 over to spare. For the first time during this tour, India will have their full strength squad available after Smriti Mandhana, Meghna Singh and Renuka Singh Thakur completed their quarantine.

India's Possible Playing XI: 

Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Mithali Raj(c), Yastika Bhatia, Harmanpreet Kaur, Richa Ghosh (wk), Deepti Sharma, Pooja Vastrakar, Meghna Singh, Jhulan Goswami, Rajeshwari Gayakwad/Poonam Yadav.

Mandhana, Goswami and Singh should come back into the side in place of Simran Dil Bahadur and S. Meghna while one of Poonam Yadav and Rajeshwari Gayakwad will have to miss as India definitely need 3 seam bowlers. Richa Ghosh didn't come out to keep wickets in the 2nd innings due to a niggle on her leg. Taniya Bhatia will come into the side if the big hitter is not fit. Mithali Raj is in good form after scoring 2 back to back half-centuries but the skipper will have to convert it to a big one this time around. Losing a 5 match series after 3 consecutive losses would be devastating for the team's confidence especially before the World Cup. 

Captain Mithali Raj and coach Ramesh Powar said before the tour that their objective is to get used to the conditions before the World Cup. Getting used to the conditions won't do the team any good if they go into the tournament after losing these 5 games which could happen and it wouldn't be too surprising if it did. Getting the key players back will be a good thing. It will be good to see the women in blue win a game comfortably for once which is something that hasn't happened too often in the recent past.

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