Shafali Verma, omitted from India’s Women’s World Cup 2025 squad, made a rapid fifty in the tournament’s first warm-up match on Thursday (September 25).
In the first warm-up match for the 2025 Women's World Cup, India A played New Zealand, hours before their main team clashed against England. Shafali was one of the renowned names to be turning up for the ‘A’ side following her snub from the World Cup squad. She made her presence felt with a statement fifty.
Chasing 274, Shafali gave India A a roaring start. Her dominance was so complete that when the first wicket fell – that of Vrinda Dinesh on the second ball of the third over with India A’s score at 31 – Dinesh was yet to get off the mark.
Shafali made a 49-ball 70, studded with 11 fours and a six. Her dismissal in the 19th over – off an Amelia Kerr delivery – triggered a collapse as India A slipped from 116-2 to 121-6.
Earlier in the day, New Zealand's Isabella Gaze scored an unbeaten 101 from No.7 to take them to 273-9.
Match 1, New Zealand Women vs India A Women
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- Ball by ball Over
What led to Shafali Verma's snub from World Cup squad?
Shafali had been struggling with poor form for a long time. The last of her four ODI fifties came way back in 2022. Since then, she had managed just 171 runs from 12 matches at an average of 14.25. Coincidentally, her last appearance out of 29 ODIs was also against New Zealand in October last year before she was dropped.
In women’s T20Is, she became India’s youngest debutant in 2019 and went on to represent them in their runners-up T20 World Cup campaign in 2020 and their semi-final run in 2023. However, following India’s group-stage exit in the 2024-25 edition, where she managed just 97 runs at an average of 24.25 and a strike rate of 105.43, she was also dropped from the squad for the home series against West Indies in December.
Following her omission, Shafali lit up the Senior Women’s One Day Trophy, India’s domestic women’s List A tournament, finishing as the top scorer with 527 runs at an average of 75.29 and a strike rate of 152.31. This red-hot form earned her a recall for the T20I leg of India's tour of England in June-July, but she was still omitted from the ODI squad, with India preferring Pratika Rawal, who made a rapid start to her ODI career.
In that triumphant T20I series against England, Shafali was India’s second-highest run-getter, scoring 176 runs at an average of 35.20 and a strike rate of 158.55.
Despite this, Shafali's chances of a last-minute call-up to India’s World Cup squad were faint. The India A tour to Australia was her golden opportunity to press her claim, however, she had a lukewarm outing, scoring just 92 runs in the three unofficial ODIs at an average of 30.66 and a strike rate of 97.87. In the T20 leg, she scored only 47 runs in the three T20Is, averaging 15.66 with a strike rate of 127.02. She was eventually overlooked for India's World Cup squad.
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