Life beyond a metro: Villages, towns genesis of India’s women’s World Cup dream
India's women cricket team, led by Harmanpreet Kaur, triumphs in the ODI World Cup, showcasing talent from small towns and inspiring future generations.
Harmanpreet Kaur, the captain of the team that won the ODI World Cup comes from Moga, Punjab, the daughter of a volleyball player turned court clerk. Smriti Mandhana, who has effortlessly transformed from a precocious teen talent to a reliable match winner comes from Sangli, Maharashtra, where her father once played district-level cricket.
The player of the tournament, Deepti Sharma comes from Agra, Uttar Pradesh, and her brother abandoned his own fast-bowling dreams to coach her. And from Rohtak, Haryana, comes destiny’s child Shafali Varma, who once disguised herself as a boy to escape the derision of neighbours, and who turned in a magical performance on the most important night of her career.
They aren’t the only ones. Draw a map of where India’s women world champions come from, and it will rarely pass-through metros or large cities. Instead, it will take you to Moga and Rohtak, Sangli and Siliguri (West Bengal), Golaghat (Assam) and Ghuwara (Madhya Pradesh). It will pass through fields, terraces, courtyards and backyards, far from the cricket powerhouses but in many ways, the real nurseries of India’s women’s cricket.
For it takes a country.
Standing steadfast behind them are fathers who carved bats for their daughters with their own hands, single mothers who raised them all on their own, and brothers who traded their own futures for their sisters’ chances – all firewalling the eventual world champions from a blizzard of patriarchal censure and structural barriers that often make the difference between promise and performance for women, and not just in sports, in India.
For it takes a family.
And together, this band of women from far-flung corners of India helped script history at the stroke of the midnight hour on Sunday as they triumphed over South Africa in the ODI World Cup final. Their 52-run victory – and Kaur‘s backwards-running catch to seal the win – mimicked the fairytale triumph of the Indian men’s team at the 1983 World Cup (and captain Kapil Dev’s catch of Vivian Richards) and is set to be a watershed moment, inspiring a new generation of women to pick up the bat and the ball.
For it takes a special team.
New centres of influence
The geography of India’s cricket world has Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai at its centre, long considered the centres of power, infrastructure and access. At one time, half the men’s team came from Bombay, and much of the other half from Madras and Bangalore (as the three cities were once called).
Today, the narrative has shifted in men’s cricket. The players may now live in the big cities, and represent them in the Indian Premier League, but many were born and raised in small-town India, and often in not-so-well-to-do households. Kaur’s squad is no different. Eleven of the 16-member team hail from small towns.
In Rohtak, Sanjeev Verma ran a small jewellery shop, but his biggest investment wasn’t gold. Neighbours mocked him for letting a girl play with boys. He smiled through it, as Shafali kept hitting sixes into their courtyards. Even as his own health deteriorated last year, his words gave Shafali the heart to power through one of her biggest personal and professional challenges. She wasn’t part of the team originally, but an injury to teammate Pratika Rawal saw her play the semi-final and final.
In Assam’s Golaghat, Uma Chetry, followed her elder siblings and learned cricket with a stick and potatoes — her first bat and ball. There was no playground, only a path of mud behind her house.
In Ghuwara, Kranti Goud picked up cricket accidentally. She happened to be at a ground where one of the teams was a player short. Eventually, she practised in her village on dry and rough grounds. Now, those grounds set up big screens for the villagers to watch their local girl lead the pace attack.
“She came in worn-out clothes. Her family had nothing. I didn’t charge her any fees,” said Rajiv Bilthare, her coach at the Sai Cricket Academy .
Foundations of glory
For many of these players, privilege didn’t come from money or infrastructure, it came from the belief of families who understood the long odds and still persisted.
She was always one of the most devoted servants of the game, taking her team Railways to several crucial wins but when Sneh Rana’s father passed away in 2021, cricket became her catharsis and her anchor.
When Renuka Thakur lost her father as a three-year-old in Rohru, her mother made sure her daughter’s focus didn’t waver.“Want to say to all the parents, never hold your daughters back if they wish to move forward. Support them, encourage them, let them shine,” news agency ANI quoted her mother Sunita as saying.
Even in urban settings like Mumbai or Delhi, that pattern holds. Jemimah Rodrigues grew up in a middle-class home in Bandra where sport and spirituality were equally sacred. Her father, Ivan, a PE teacher and coach, handled her coaching; her mother, Lavita, handled everything else. She started the tournament patchily and was dropped midway, but found her way back to the team, and to form (and she thanked Jesus, her family, and the team for that).
In Delhi, Pratika Rawal, a top student and psychology major, balanced books and batting thanks to parents who valued both, the importance of having Delhi University’s stamp on her degree, and her own ambitions. It helped that her father, a BCCI level-II certified umpire, had a foot in one of the two demanding worlds she was part of even as her mother kept her grounded. She was around nine years old, in the third grade when she first asked her father, the BCCI-certified umpire Pradeep Rawal, if she too could build a life in the sport they both loved. “As long as you enjoy it, do it,” he said.
Harmanpreet’s father became her first fan and forever motivator. The captain of the team ran and jumped into her father’s arms when after the win. Kamaldeesh Pal Singh Sodhi, Harmanpreet’s first coach and mentor, recalled seeing her play with a dupatta tied around her waist and being impressed. He ran the Gyan Jyoti school and girls’ cricket academy in Darapur, Moga, and recruited her for his team. In her first year in 2006, they became state school champions.
Wicket-keeper and power-hitter Richa Ghosh’s father, Manabendra, remained her childhood coach and is still her confidante. Their home was just 200 metres from the ground and she would often accompany him dad to the Baghajatin Athletic Club in Siliguri. “She was the only girl in camp when she joined, practising only with the boys. But now, even the boys look up to her,” her childhood coach Gopal Saha said.
As India won the World Cup, celebrations broke out in towns and cities often away from the national spotlight. Local courtyards and community centres became spontaneous hubs of festivity, with people exchanging sweets, dancing in the streets, and sharing a moment of pride.
Mum’s the word
Quietly, mothers shaped this revolution too. Arundhati Reddy’s mother, Bhagya, raised her on her own. Bhagya, a semi-professional volleyball player, brought athleticism into her daughter’s childhood. She supported her cricketing dreams, defended her during school attendance issues, and even encouraged her to quit her Railways job when she wasn’t getting enough playing opportunities.
In April, Shree Charani became the first woman from YSR-Kadapa district in Andhra Pradesh to play for India. Her father’s reluctance about cricket being her sport of choice instead of athletics, was vetoed by her mother’s support. She was India’s best spinner in the tournament.
“When I went and told my mother that I wanted to play cricket, she supported me immediately. But it took one year to convince my father,” Charani told bcci.tv. “Though my uncle trained me to be a fast bowler, I wasn’t getting wickets. I tried my hand at spin, it worked.”
Many of their parents were sportspersons who never got their due – volleyball and basketball players, district cricketers, coaches and umpires.Harmanpreet inherited her father’s sporting mind, Smriti her father’s batting acumen and Jemimah her father’s flair.
Player of the tournament Deepti’s mother, Sushila Sharma, said, “Deepti has made our family and the entire nation proud. The credit for her success goes to her brother Sumit, who taught her cricket from childhood.”
In their historic victory, these women have turned Indian cricket’s map upside down. They have shown that greatness can grow anywhere, especially in the muddy backyards of unsung towns and districts. For the next generation who will now grow up believing that they can, the class of 2025 has paved the way.
On Sunday, D Y Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai became everyone’s field of dreams.
