Following India’s maiden Women’s World Cup title, Abhishek Mukherjee profiles Shafali Verma, the mercurial strokemaker who emerged from the shadows to bring home the trophy. This feature originally appeared in the 2025 edition of the Wisden Almanack.
Laura Wolvaardt waited at the striker’s end in front of a packed house in Navi Mumbai. She had already broken a plethora of batting records in this World Cup, but all that would become a mere footnote if she could not see her side over the line in the final. There was reason for South Africa to be confident: they had two batters set, they batted deep, and if the rain arrived – it had been lashing down not too far away – they were ahead on DLS.
Until this point, Shafali Verma had taken a solitary wicket from 30 ODIs, though she did have form in domestic cricket having claimed a hat-trick earlier in the year with her looping off-breaks. With the match in the balance, Harmanpreet Kaur tossed her the ball. “The way she had batted, I knew it was her day,” India’s skipper later reflected. “I had to go with my gut feeling… I had to give her at least one over.”
Verma took just two balls to strike, holding on to a low catch off her own bowling to dismiss Suné Luus and break the stand that was threatening to take the match away from India. Given a second over, she made another crucial intervention, strangling Marizanne Kapp down the leg-side to turn the game in India’s favour. Verma finished with figures of 2-36 from seven overs, the 21-year-old following up the most important innings of her life to secure India’s women their first World Cup title in any format.
That innings, a commanding 78-ball 87 to set the platform for India’s 298-7, demonstrated how much she has developed as a player. She has always been a supreme strokeplayer down the ground but the new, improved Verma showed her adaptability by scoring runs all round the wicket and keeping a cool head when she was in full flow.
Another technical adjustment was evident. Back in 2021, Katherine Sciver-Brunt had peppered Verma with short-pitched balls in a T20I at Northampton, pinning her back before castling her for a duck with a full delivery. Once back home, she returned to the nets, putting in hours against male bowlers (something that, as we shall see, was not new to her). At the World Cup final four years later, she looked in complete control whenever the South African seamers bowled anything short of a good length.
Since bursting onto the scene as a raw and precocious talent, making her T20I debut in 2019 aged just 15, Verma has had to improve various aspects of her game. After being dropped from India’s ODI side last year, she began intense cardio sessions to build up her physical strength and focused on adding more versatility to her batting, allowing her to nudge the ball around for singles without compromising her trademark drives.
The Verma that took home the Player of the Match award in Navi Mumbai was a very different player to the one who succumbed cheaply in India’s T20 World Cup final defeat to Australia in 2020. “Back then, I used to be more fearless with my strokes,” she tells WCM. “Now, I have learnt to respect the good balls.”
In large part, Verma attributes her evolution to the influence of Meg Lanning, her captain and opening partner for Delhi Capitals in the Women’s Premier League (WPL). She describes meeting the former Australian skipper as a turning point in her life. “She keeps teaching me… and I drop everything just to listen to her.”
Verma’s starring role in the World Cup final tasted all the sweeter given her bumpy ride to that point. When India announced their squad in late August, she was not among the 15 names. It would take an injury to Pratika Rawal to eventually see her added to the group ahead of their semi-final against Australia.
She was on domestic duty with Haryana when she received the SOS, chatting with teammates and watching a movie following a rained-off fixture when the message came through. With no back-up batter in the squad, Verma would be thrust straight into action. “This is your chance,” said her Haryana teammates, some of whom were childhood friends. They told her to keep things simple and instilled her with confidence.
Verma would make just 10 against Australia as Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet took centre stage to vanquish the reigning champions in a record-breaking chase. Come the final, it was the late replacement who was the headline act.
With the celebrations having subsided, Verma is able to reflect on the enormity of her team’s achievement. “It feels great that no girl will
have to cut her hair short in order to play cricket with boys,” she says.
There was no cricket academy for girls in the small town of Rohtak, about 70km from Delhi, when Verma was growing up, and so her father decided to cut her hair short, dress her like a boy, and send her to a boys’ academy. While her true identity slipped under the radar, her talent did not. The faster the boys bowled at her, the harder she hit them.
Playing with boys at this formative stage accelerated her development but Verma has not forgotten the circumstances in which she was admitted to the academy. Following India’s triumph on the world stage, she hopes that cricket academies for girls will be available in every state across the country.
Verma’s decision to seriously pursue cricket predated her father’s hoodwinkery. She was only nine when the nearby small town of Lahli hosted Sachin Tendulkar’s last Ranji Trophy match. Naturally, she asked her father to take her to watch the Little Master in the flesh and the experience decided her fate.
Six years later, Verma broke Tendulkar’s record to become the youngest Indian to score an international fifty. Six years after that, she was Player of the Match when India’s women won their first World Cup in Tendulkar’s home state. By then the roles had switched: Tendulkar was among those cheering for her in the stands.
Verma hopes India’s World Cup triumph can spark change across all levels of the game in her country. While there is no dearth of talent in the world’s largest player pool, support for female cricketers is not easy to come by. Several members of India’s World Cup-winning squad have overcome familiar obstacles: humble backgrounds, lack of infrastructure (especially in small towns), having to play with boys (a blessing in disguise for some), and a general lack of acceptance of women playing sport.
India’s progress to the 2017 World Cup final, where they were denied at the last by Anya Shrubsole, captured the imagination and created new fans, and their defeat at Lord’s didn’t prevent thousands of supporters waiting outside the airport to greet them upon their return home.
In response, the BCCI launched the Women’s T20 Challenge the following year, a trial which ultimately led to the formation of the WPL in 2023. And in a landmark move in January 2025, the BCCI announced equal match fees for India’s male and female internationals.
These have all been welcome developments, but they come with caveats – overall, India’s women take home a tiny fraction of the sums earned by their male counterparts – and added pressure. When India’s women have slipped up, as they have done frequently on the biggest stage in recent years, predictable vitriol follows on social media: How can they earn so much and still lose?
That all changed on November 2 when Verma inspired her team to glory. India now has a batch of female sporting icons who were watched by 185 million Indians as they secured the trophy (matching the viewership for India’s victory in the 2024 men’s T20 World Cup final).
Cricket academies for girls in India are now attracting unprecedented interest, with parents seeing financial security in the game for their daughters. Verma’s dreams are coming true. Indian girls do not have to chop their hair to play cricket anymore.
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