India is in a spot of bother at the ongoing Women’s ODI World Cup 2025 after incurring back-to-back losses against South Africa and Australia. It will have to pull up its socks if it has to reach the semifinals.

W. V. Raman, former India head coach who guided the Women in Blue to the Women’s T20 World Cup 2020 final, remains confident of the Harmanpreet Kaur-led side bouncing back and winning its remaining three league games to comfortably reach the last four.

“They can still go on to win the remaining (league) games (vs England on October 19; vs New Zealand on October 23 and vs. Bangladesh on October 26). Just because they have suffered reverses in a couple of games doesn’t mean their campaign is over. It’s just a case of bouncing back and let’s face it, this team is good enough to win the championship and if you have to win the championship, you’ve got to bounce back from setbacks,” the 60-year-old told Sportstar on the sidelines of former India cricketer R. Ashwin being felicitated by his alma mater, PSBB (Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan in K.K. Nagar) at its campus in Chennai on Tuesday.

The five-bowler theory adopted by the Indian team has come in for criticism in certain quarters, but Raman backed the management.

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“The challenge for them would be to see if they could disturb the batting combination by bolstering up the bowling attack. And then they will have to also see, whether they have a very good sixth bowling option that they are looking for. It’s not an easy call to make and you can’t really resort to knee-jerk reactions and simply alter your plans because you lost a couple of games,” he said.

Raman further praised the all-rounders, spinners and the lower-order batters while acknowledging the crucial contributions of wicketkeeper-batter Richa Ghosh. “And maybe Jemimah (Rodrigues) and Harmanpreet (Kaur) could have contributed a bit more than they’ve done so far. But they’re experienced enough and they are dangerous players when they get going,” he said.

Earlier, Ashwin said, “PSBB had laid the foundation for his cricketing journey.”

Raman said Ashwin’s curious mind was one of the reasons for his success. “He would look at how to circumvent that problem, how to solve and overcome it,” he said.

Published on Oct 14, 2025