Captain Shafali Verma's India squad make history, lift women's cricket and maiden Under-19 Women’s T20 World Cup trophy

India women's captain Shafali Verma holding the maiden world cup trophy and her Indian women's cricket team after the finals India won against England on Sunday. (Photo: Twitter)

Shafali Verma’s acceptance speech as the winning captain at the inaugural women’s Under World Cup final was more waterworks than words. The camera was on her. She was at the centre of the proceedings. Her effort to temper her reaction was earnest. But the tears refused to stop.

Indian Women's Team Won the World CupCricket Match Bravo pic.twitter.com/DGi9R5xe5w

— Jagruti Bhat (@JagrutiBhat11) January 30, 2023

The occasion warranted the emotions on the part of Verma, in all their rawness and abundance. Not everyone, after all, achieves the distinction of being the captain of the title-winning team at the inaugural women’s Under-19 World Cup. Not every day does a 19-year-old become the first woman in history to lead her country to a World Cup triumph.

In helming India’s title-winning campaign at the 2023 women’s T20 World Cup that culminated in a seven-wicket victory over England in Potchefstroom on Sunday, Verma ended an agonising wait for a maiden women’s world title for Indian cricket. Tears felt fittingly cathartic; restraint fell out of currency.

“What we are here for, we did that,” said Verma at the post-match presentation, her words punctuated by sobs. “The way all the girls performed, backed each other, backed me, it’s all looking good. I am so happy…

“Every day the support staff backed us, reminding us that we’re here just for the Cup. Thanks to the BCCI for giving me confidence and for giving me this beautiful team…”

Prior to Sunday, India had finished only second when it came to major event finals. Since as far back as 2005, they ended on the wrong side of the result in as many as three World Cups finals — two in ODIs and one in the T20 format — and in a Commonwealth Games gold-medal bout. So discomfiting the recurrent so-near-yet-so-far narrative had become that the outcome on Sunday felt like the breaking of a curse.

Indian women's team after winning the inaugural ICC Under-19 Women’s T20 Cricket World Cup 2023. (Photo: Twitter)

Few would know the feeling better than Verma. She came into the Under-19 World Cup with two appearances in major events with the senior Indian side under her belt. In both — the 2020 T20 World Cup in Australia and the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham — India stumbled at the last hurdle.

“I was in tears when we lost the T20 World Cup in 2020,” Verma recalled during the presser after the match. “Today, they were different; they were of joy because we achieved what we set out to do and we will be heading home with a World Cup… I tried holding them back but just couldn’t. I was just happy.”

***

Over in India, Ranadeep Sadhu appeared remarkably collected for a father of the Player of the Match in a World Cup final on Sunday evening. Ostensibly Zen, he spoke to a reporter outside his home in small-town Chinsurah, West Bengal, about his daughter, Titas, minutes after she was named the Player of the Final.

“In local and domestic tournaments, too, she has always had a knack for doing well in finals and getting the Player-of-the-Match/Tournament Awards,” Ranadeep, a former state-level athlete whose footsteps Titas followed in on the way to taking up cricket, told News 18 Bangla.
She likes the big-match environment. Eighty per cent of the deliveries she bowled in the final were spot-on.”

Sadhu’s superb returns of 4-0-6-2 against England lend credence to his claim. The sole pacer in the XI through the best part of the World Cup, Sadhu, 18, pegged England back as early as the fourth ball of the match after India opted to bowl. A tall right-arm seam-bowling staple on the Bengal senior side, she dug a back-of-a-length delivery deep on off and had opener Liberty Heap heave into the leg side in vain.

In her third, Sadhu could have had her second had wicketkeeper Richa Ghosh hung onto a straightforward thick edge off Ryana MacDonald-Gay’s drive. The shelled chance had Sadhu on haunches, but the disappointment would last only so long.

A nipbacker in her final over crashed into the middle and off of Seren Smale. The centerpiece of her incisive unbroken four-over opening spell, the delivery helped reduce England to 22 for 4 in just 6.2 overs. In a manner reminiscent of her Bengal mentor Jhulan Goswami’s superlative 10-3-23-3 in the 2017 ODI World Cup final against the senior England side, Sadhu’s turn on Sunday severely hindered the opponents. Except this time, the Indian batting line-up held itself together well enough, the opposition unable to deny them a well-deserved victory or India’s best bowler on the day her moment in the sun.

“It's really surreal because all of us have been looking forward to this day for a long time now,” Sadhu said after being named the best performer of the match. "It's not quite lonely [being the only fast bowler in the XI] because we are team-mates.

“I have the other bowling partners, spinners with me. We have played two matches here against Sri Lanka and New Zealand. And we also watched the games played here. So we had a pretty good idea on where to bowl.”

One of the six bowlers Verma deployed on Sunday to skittle England out for only 68 inside 17.1 overs, Sadhu’s accuracy on the day wasn’t limited to her bowling alone. As broadcasters ran after members of the victorious Indian team for post-match on-camera reactions amidst delirious celebrations, a teary-eyed Sadhu summed up with perfection what the title meant to her team.

"A lot of people have been telling us a lot of athletes have tried this and couldn't get it. This is the first [World] Cup for an Indian women's side," she said.

Indian women's team after winning the inaugural ICC Under-19 Women’s T20 Cricket World Cup 2023. (Photo: Twitter)

"The first time BCCI took us under [its wing from the Women's Cricket Association of India], it was after 2005, when Nooshin [Al Khadeer] ma'am played the World Cup and they (India) lost the final. For us to win it [and] for her being our coach, it was really superb."

***

Al Khadeer, the head coach of the India Under-19s, was the final wicket to fall when India’s dream of a maiden world title came crashing down in the 2005 Women’s ODI World Cup final against Australia at Centurion. Through the best part of the 17 and a half years since, she has gone on to establish herself as one of the most astute and successful coaches on the Indian women’s domestic circuit.

On Sunday, the past distilled into the present for Al Khadeer on South African soil. From living a heartbreak at India’s first appearance in the title bout of a women’s cricket world event to becoming the first coach to oversee a World Cup victory in Indian women’s cricket history — the former India spinner’s journey took a new turn.

“The most special thing about this team is belief," Al Khadeer told the broadcaster during a sideline interview shortly after India's victory. “I know it was a bad game against Australia. But the way they re-gathered and played thereafter, all credits to the vibes we have. We've kept it very simple. We thought that we would play proper cricket and simple cricket to achieve this."

"Right from the national anthem till the time we won, we had goosebumps," she added. "I realise and understand how special it is for us. To live it [the dream of winning World Cup] through the young girls it is commendable.

"This is the feeling we have been waiting for very long. This is the first time we have won the Cup and it has come with the Under-19 kids. It just shows the kind of depth we have and what is there for us in the future."

Women’s cricket in India has long copped — and suffered from — misinformed approximations about its domestic pool. Fitting, then, it was that the future stars of the sport irrefutably established on Sunday that the talent available in the oft-perceived shallows of the women’s game in the country is good enough to win a World Cup, an inaugural one at that.