Velocity v Supernovas - more than just a match of cricketing acumen
The focus, invariably, will be as much on the captains - Mithali Raj and Harmanpreet Kaur - as it will be on the youngsters and international stars

BCCI
Velocity are led by Mithali Raj, arguably India's best ever cricketer and captain of the ODI side; Supernovas are led by Harmanpreet Kaur, the most exciting batsman of her generation, Raj's deputy in the ODI side and captain of the T20 team.
Match info
Start time: 1930 IST
Venue: Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur.
The long-suspected acrimony between the two players became public during the World T20 in the West Indies in November. Raj was dropped for the semi-final, which India lost, and after the match Harmanpreet said she had wanted to retain a winning side from the previous match. Raj's manager, however, then launched an unprecedented Twitter attack on Harmanpreet's captaincy. She called Harmanpreet a "manipulative, lying, immature, undeserving captain" and also said the women's team believed in "politics not sport".
The first casualty was the interim head coach Ramesh Powar - his contract expired days after that semi-final defeat and was not extended. Powar, who received the backing of Harmanpreet and her T20 deputy Smriti Mandhana, was critical of Raj in his report on India's performance at the World T20. He said she had threatened to pull out of the tournament if not allowed to open the batting.
There were a lot of emails sent by Raj and Harmanpreet to the Committee of Administrators, all leaked to the media. Raj said the episode had left her, "for the first time in a 20-year long career… deflated, depressed and let down. I am forced to think if my services to my country are of any value to a few people in power who are out to destroy me and break my confidence." She did not directly blame Harmanpreet, saying "I am of the opinion that Harman and I are senior players and our issues, if any, should be sorted out by the two of us by sitting across the table."
Well, they sat down across the table - along with senior BCCI officials - within a week of Raj's email. Raj is understood to have told Harmanpreet that Annisha Gupta, whose tweets had set off the storm, was not her manager. On her part, Harmanpreet told Raj that the decision to exclude her from the World T20 semis was not a personal choice but a collective call.
Or so we thought. Earlier this week, though, Raj told Cricbuzz, "I do keep to myself [in the dressing room] and people can't judge me for that right now…I believe what has happened has definitely made me more wiser to people around me in the dressing room… I wouldn't say I felt lonely but I definitely feel that I was betrayed."
Since the start of the 2017 World Cup, Raj, now 36, has been largely inconsistent on whether she herself envisions herself playing the 2020 T20 World Cup or the 2021 ODI World Cup. While still a formidable force in the 50-over format, on the subject of whether retirement from the shortest format figures in her plans, Raj's go-to refrain when fielding questions at press conferences of late has been, "You'll see when that happens."
What Raman, Mandhana and the management make of the denial may not be brought up for discussion until the national camp in Bengaluru gets underway next month. For now, the focus remains on the action in Jaipur and the battle for supremacy between Raman-Harmanpreet's Supernovas and Raj's Velocity.