Amol Muzumdar: 11167 runs but not good enough to play for India, now coaches women's team to World Cup trophy
Harmanpreet Kaur touching his feet before sinking into a long embrace revealed the Amol Muzumdar touch to the Indian triumph.
It wasn’t so much freedom as liberation at midnight. Liberation from decades of ups and downs, of frustration and heartbreak. Liberation from years of being so tantalisingly near, yet so agonisingly far. Liberation from being second-best, from not being able to cross the finish line when it mattered the most.
As the clock ticked over to 00:00 and Sunday gave way to Monday, Harmanpreet Kaur fittingly held the catch that crowned India Women as 50-over World Cup winners for the first time. Through the simple act of grabbing the white cricket ball in front of 45,000 spectators at the DY Patil Stadium, among them cricketing superstars of the past, men and women, Harmanpreet helped script history and pen a new, glorious chapter for women’s cricket. Suffice to say that this is just the beginning, not an end in itself.
This was a title triumph earned the hard way. A mid-campaign hat-trick of losses from winning positions against South Africa, Australia and England left India’s interest in their own party hanging by the slenderest of threads. It would have been easy to wallow in self-pity, to rue their bad fortune, to lose heart and belief and confidence.
But to their credit, Harmanpreet’s girls didn’t allow those defeats to define them. They used them as spurs, as stepping stones. First, New Zealand were brushed aside in a virtual quarterfinal. Then, the bogey team Australia were conquered, courtesy of a world record run chase. And finally, in a match that will be remembered for long and with the greatest fondness, they tamed the courageous Laura Woolvardt’s South Africa, who had written their own redemption song after being shot out for 69 by England in their opening match of the competition.
The victory was the team’s, fair and square. Of the 15 who were part of the final, and of Pratika Rawal, the wonderful opener, who was forced to miss the knockouts with knee and ankle injuries. After all, it was they who rode the punches, who took the blows on their chins and came out swinging, not in hope with conviction.
But in that endeavour, they were aided massively by the nearly-man of Indian cricket, a 50-year-old Mumbaikar answering to the name of Amol Muzumdar.
A little over a week ahead of his 51st birthday, the head coach of India Women couldn’t have asked for a better gift. For two years, from the time he took charge in October 2023, Muzumdar’s sights were trained on the home World Cup. Fourteen years prior, he had seen some of his best friends, among them Sachin Tendulkar, lift a 50-over World Cup on home turf at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. For all his exploits at the domestic level – he scored 11167 runs in first-class cricket with an average of 4813 -- the right-handed batter never got to play for the country. This World Cup triumph, one is sure, will go some way towards wiping out that bitter disappointment.
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Muzumdar took charge of the India Women's team at a difficult time. In the preceding five years, Ramesh Powar, WV Raman and then Powar himself had been at the helm of affairs; under former India opener Raman, the team made it to the final of the T20 World Cup in Australia in early 2020, but otherwise, it was a phase of bitter disappointment for the team in global competitions.
In the ten months before Muzumdar’s appointment, India didn’t have a full-time head coach. Between Powar’s sudden ouster in December 2022 and the start of Muzumdar’s stint, Hrishikesh Kanitkar and Nooshin Al Khadeer had overseen engagements in an interim capacity. There were whispers of unrest within the team, of groupism and factionalism, of trust deficit, of players pulling in different directions, of indiscipline – the usual whispers when teams, men or women, fall short of expectations in any discipline.
Muzumdar’s first task was to win the trust of his charges. To convince them that he wasn’t there to further personal agendas but to help them become the best version of themselves. He had put in the hard yards for 20 seasons in domestic cricket, amassing 11,167 first-class runs. He had the pedigree – vice-captain of India Under-19 in 1994, teammate of Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly in the India ‘A’ setup, captain of the Ranji Trophy-winning Mumbai side (in all, he was part of eight title triumphs), the man who had gone past GR Vishwanath (230) to make the highest score by an Indian (260) on first-class debut.
He was no stranger to coaching either, starting with age-group teams at the National Cricket Academy (now the Centre of Excellence) and running through to the Mumbai state side. He was also part of the backroom staff with the Rajasthan Royals and served as the batting consultant to South Africa during their 2019 tour of India. However, this presented a different challenge altogether: working full-time with a national women’s team, a team that struggled to translate potential into sustained performances.
It didn’t take him long to win his wards over, with his honesty and sincerity and dedication to the greater cause. He didn’t sugarcoat, and when he cracked the whip, the players knew it wasn’t without good reason. Muzumdar gave them a serious talking-to after the four-run loss to England in Indore when victory appeared the easier proposition. Harmanpreet revealed later that the message had hit home, and the side was rejuvenated from there on.
For any team to succeed, the captain and the coach must be on the same page and share a chemistry that is imperative to drive the team forward. Harmanpreet and Muzumdar clearly tick those boxes. In the euphoria of the historic accomplishment, Muzumdar hasn’t been forgotten; Harmanpreet touching his feet before sinking into a long embrace revealed the Muzumdar touch to the Indian triumph. Like Dravid will readily testify, the joy of coaching a World Cup-winning outfit almost, almost, equals the high of coveting ultimate glory as a player.
