India Women’s world cup win: The Class of 2025, template for future
The women’s World Cup 2025 victory is Indian cricket’s sliding doors moment — for those who run the game in India and their approach to women’s cricket
When Harmanpreet Kaur, captain of India’s women’s cricket team, ended South Africa’s innings at the Women’s World Cup final — jump timed perfectly, ball stopped mid-flight as it zipped past her shoulder — she set off, tearing across the outfield with her arms spread wide. All by herself, a girl in blue against an expanse of green. All by herself yet sweeping the world up in her joyous, triumphal run. All by herself, but the one for all.
It was a stirring performance by the Indian side in Navi Mumbai on Sunday night. The players detached themselves from the emotional upheaval after their high-octane, semi-final against Australia and did what needed to be done.
Think of Amanjot Kaur’s nervy catch off Laura Wolvaardt as India’s 2025 World Cup campaign in a capsule. From a good position came a slip through the fingers, then a juggle and finally, a one-handed grab that had them flat on their back in total release.
The Indian women’s team’s victory at the 2025 World Cup is only the second time in a quarter of the century that India has won the 50-over event, the sport’s holy grail for teams of both genders. This is only the third time in 26 combined editions of the men’s and women’s 50-over World Cups that India has had its name on the trophy. Before Sunday night, only one other Indian women’s sporting team had won a world cup or championship — kabaddi, in 2012. In field hockey, the men’s team won the 1975 World Cup.
Sunday night’s win is being called “the 1983 moment” for Indian women’s cricket. The 1983 comparison is particularly flimsy as Indian cricket was not the centre of the cricket world at the time, replete with resources, manpower, infrastructure and wealth. Which it very much is now and even was in 2017, a more accurate “watershed” for Indian women’s cricket. The word “watershed” figuratively refers to “an event or a period of time that marks an important change.”
The only watershed that this World Cup victory will be for the women’s game — and by extension maybe women’s sport in India — will be on the ground, rippling through the hearts and minds of young girls who have watched these women play. What is going to follow from the ground is a flood of talent and ambition.
In this World Cup, we saw the impact of the genuine watershed in Indian women’s cricket — their performances in the 2017 World Cup with the emergence of the Harmanpreet Kaur-Smriti Mandhana generation who had followed Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami into the game. These World Cup winners have many among them who are successors of the Class of 2017.
A majority of the 2025 squad comes from outside the major metros: Harmanpreet of Moga led Smriti from Sangli, Renuka from Rohru, Sneh of Dehradun, Kranti of Ghuwara, Uma of Bokakhat, Richa of Siliguri, Shafali of Rohtak and Sree of Kadapa who won the World Cup alongside Deepti of Agra, Jemi and Radha of Mumbai, Pratika of Delhi, Arundhati of Hyderabad and Amanjot of Chandigarh.
Even under the thrall of rousing cheers, fireworks and adrenalin high of victory, the Class of 2025 reached out physically and in words, to their predecessors, to those who had gone before. To share the trophy with them. On TV, we saw Smriti and Harman flinging themselves at Jhulandi, dragging her out of post-match media work and burying themselves in her shoulders. They had promised her the 2022 T20 World Cup but could not live up to those words. This became their bigger gift. Everybody wept, Jhulan’s glasses knocked sideways, her TV-mandated hairstyle askew. Anjum Chopra hopped in and out of the TV frame, at one go embracing a winner, in the next shooing away bystanders who wanted handshakes, her once-neatly-tucked shirt flapping outside its confines.
Mithali, Anjum and Reema Malhotra were being swept away from whatever it was they were doing, handed the trophy and surrounded by the players in sharing their celebration. This was solidarity, sisterhood and gratitude to the giants on whose shoulders these new world champions stood. Jemi Rodrigues said, “This is for all those who played before us and for the future generation.”
So, while 1983 was a watershed for Indian cricket itself, the women’s World Cup 2025 victory is its sliding doors moment. Not for girls in India wondering whether they should play cricket or not — about that there is going to be no ambiguity in the future. This is a sliding door for those who run the game in India and their approach to women’s cricket. Player of the tournament Deepti Sharma was asked about what were the changes she hoped this result would bring and she said, “I hope there are even more matches for us now.” Shouldn’t be difficult, no?
This victory will require a re-calibration of how the women’s game is to be handled. How to benefit from this enormous opportunity of growth, expansion and scale of the country’s No.1 women’s sport at a time we are told it is booming. Whether women’s cricket needs to be handled as a separate department — with separate focus on operations, marketing, scheduling. More teams in the Women’s Premier League, surely?
That other sliding door is for it to be seen again, as it is today, merely as an adjunct to the male sport. As of now we have a clue. The BCCI secretary has announced a cash award of ₹51 crore for the winning team, support staff and selection committee. For the men’s team that won the T20 World Cup, the total award was ₹125 crore.
Sharda Ugra writes on sports. The views expressed are personal
