Devika Palshikar, a former Indian cricketer, has been given the role of consultant coach for the Nepali women’s cricket team.
The Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) announced on Sunday that they had brought in a foreign coach for the Nepali women’s cricket team. The coach arrived in Nepal on Saturday and has already started working with the team.
CAN has announced that Palshikar will be working as a consultant coach for the Nepali women’s cricket team in preparation for the ICC Women’s World Cup T20 Asia region qualifiers, which will be held in Malaysia from August 28.
Devika Palshikar, a 44-year-old former Indian cricketer, played one Test and 15 ODIs for India from 2006 to 2008. She took 3 wickets on her ODI debut against Pakistan in 2006, and finished her ODI career with 12 wickets in 12 innings. She also scored 66 runs in 9 innings in ODIs. In her only Test match, she scored 7 runs and remained wicketless.
Palshikar has since worked as a coach, most recently as the batting coach of Mumbai Indians in the Women’s Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2023. She has also served as the assistant coach of the Indian women’s cricket team (2014 and 2016) and the Bangladesh women’s cricket team (2018), and was the head coach of the Velocity team in India’s Women’s T20 Challenge in 2022.
The Nepali women’s cricket team is currently under closed training under the guidance of Samson Jung Thapa, the cricket coach of the National Sports Council. The team has a 24-member preliminary squad that will be trimmed down before the qualifying matches, which will be held from August 28 to September 9.
The qualifying matches will be played in two groups of six teams each. Group A includes hosts Malaysia, Nepal, Bahrain, Bhutan, Qatar, and UAE. Group B includes China, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Thailand, and Myanmar.
24 member preliminary Nepal Squad
* Rubina Chhetri
* Sita Rana Magar
* Indu Barma
* Kabita Kunwar
* Kabita Joshi
* Asmina Karmacharya
* Kritika Marasini
* Bindu Rawal
* Apsari Begam
* Kajol Shrestha
* Samjhana Khadka
* Ishwori Bista
* Jyoti Pandey
* Sarswati Caudhary
* Nery Thapa
* Manisha Chaudhary
* Rubi Poddar
* Khushi Dangol
* Puja Mahato
* Sabnam Rai
* Roma Thapa
* Kanchan Shrestha
* Shristhi Jaisi
* Sneha Mehra
