Notes From the World Cup: Around Rain and Tears, We Have Liftoff

India vs Sri Lanka, Guwahati

“By the time your aircraft touches the tarmac in Guwahati, it’s clear the city is gearing up for something big. Even before your luggage hits the conveyor belt, the bold aubergine-hued hoardings of Women’s World Cup 2025 greet you at every nook and cranny of the terminal.”

Thus starts Purnima Malhotra’s illustration of Guwahati on the eve of the 2025 Women’s ODI World Cup. It is festive season in Assam and West Bengal. The hill-breeze carries the scent of wildflowers and the sound of conch-shell. Guwahati’s first ever World Cup game, for either gender or format, has given the air a buzz.

Friends visiting the city speak of people wearing jerseys, shops with A4-sized posters. On the streets, whichever way you turn to, solo-shot hoardings look back at you. Smriti Mandhana in some, captain Harmanpreet Kaur in some others, and often, Zubeen Garg.

Pujo week it certainly is, but Assam is half, maybe three-quarters, in mourning. On the afternoon of 19th September, Zubeen Garg, singer and songwriter, passed away aged 52. But to merely call him a singer is like saying the Brahmaputra is just a river. He was practically Assam’s cultural looking glass to the world, their pivot, and oftentimes, their sanctuary.

More than one million broken hearts poured into Guwahati for his funeral procession. The Assam Government declared four days of state mourning. For those, like me, who had only known Zubeen from afar, stumbling onto his music through a YouTube shuffle, this was a tableau of loss felt physically. This singer, who sang in forty-plus languages, whose discography has an article of its own on Wikipedia, had stepped over the line between artist and friend. To them, he was neither Zubeen Garg nor Zubeen, but Zubeen da. Vinayak saw billboards with his face pasted in large, cab drivers choking up while talking about him.

On Tuesday afternoon, under a sullen grey sky that carried within it the electricity of a World Cup opener and the grief of a land newly bereaved, Shreya Ghoshal lit the sensory cauldron with a soaring rendition of Jana Gana Mana. It felt right, having one of India’s finest voices carry a young, dynamic, immensely-talented collection of players to the starting line of a home World Cup. And, as if by muscle memory for not being able to let a moment breathe, the stadium DJ supplemented Shreya’s silk with a shrill “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and Eye of The Tiger.

Mercifully, Shreya still got one more run at the mic, at the mid-match break, where she sang a collection of Zubeen Garg’s classics. Mayabini simultaneously raised the roof and turned a lot of eyes into leaking taps.

Picture credit: Henry Moeran.

At the toss, Sri Lanka captain Chamari Athapaththu chose to bowl, suspecting a sticky pitch early on, and dew later in the evening. Besides, grey clouds in this part of the world mean rain.

To kick off the thirteen edition of the Women’s ODI World Cup, out strode Smriti Mandhana and Pratika Rawal. Madhana, by now, is a senior in the dressing room, but Rawal joined the team only as recently as December last year. And in these ten months, the two have turned into a run mill. Just a couple of weeks ago, they broke the record for the most runs by a batting pair in a calendar year. It’s only September. Both like pace, both can hit spin, both have multiple gears.

Sri Lanka started the game with a 3-31 head-to-head record against India. Giving Smriti and Pratika half an hour together would’ve dragged them a long way to 3-32.

So, even though the conditions were calling out to bowlers to let it rip, Sri Lanka started with a low heartbeat. Slow, straight, on a length hard to hit. Pratika and Smriti neither got the pace nor the width to open their arms.

In the fourth over, Athapaththu threw the ball over to Udeshika Prabodhani. 40-years-old, one of the handful to have played more than 100 Women’s ODIs, Prabodhani took the control and turned it up a notch. She bowled the perfect length, a similar, slowish pace, but lured Smriti Mandhana to stretch for a shot. Smriti reached for something that wasn’t quite there, and skied one on Prabodhani’s second ball.

With the sky turning greyer by the minute, Prabodhani and Kulasuriya bowled even tighter, almost forcing themselves to not get carried away by the conditions and stick to their plans of cramping Pratika Rawal and Harleen Deol. They understood a quirk of this Indian lineup - starve them of boundaries and they get stiff. It was to be the theme for the first ten overs. India nudging and tapping to 43/1; Sri Lanka ready to bring on their spin battery to cramp them some more.

On either side of an hour-long break in play, forced by the rain, Sri Lanka’s bowlers kept up their relentless control. Pratika Rawal got out, after which Harmanpreet looked to be in fluent touch, sparking hopes of a tall score.

The foundation was definitely well-set, at 120-2 at the halfway stage. And then, within a space of twelve balls, India lost four wickets for four runs. 124-6. Harmanpreet out, Harleen out, Jemimah out, Richa Ghosh out. That’s the batting lineup done.

You’d think a bowling lineup with an average age of 35 might find it tough against a younger, more powerful, and possibly more equipped home side. So would I. And we’d both be wrong. The Sri Lankan bowlers laid out every specific shade of what we sometimes vaguely call intelligence and experience.

Amanjot Kaur is playing her first World Cup. At just twenty-five years old, she doesn’t carry scar tissue of lost tournaments like some others in the dressing room. In fact, she has befriended success already, through two title-winning campaigns for the Mumbai Indians in the Women’s Premier League.

Amanjot walked into a situation that couldn’t have afforded even one more mistake, like she had secretly wished for this, where the scoreboard flashed wonky numbers and she got the chance to correct it. One four turned to two fours, then a couple more, then a six. She lived a charmed life, gifted four dropped catches by the otherwise solid Sri Lankan fielders, but, to her credit, she got bolder every time.

Across from her, Deepti Sharma went all soft hands and deft touch, nurdling the ball around to ensure Amanjot’s burst of brilliance could be utilised in full. This is the new Deepti, the one who discovered sometime last year that strike rates should belong to this century, not the last.

Amanjot and Deepti raised 86 runs in thirteen overs, and all of a sudden, India were 210-6, with 7 more overs to go.

On a pre-tournament sound byte for the broadcasters, Sneh Rana spoke of the clarity the coach and captain have given everyone about their roles. That clarity was evident in her little cameo, as she started her innings in fourth gear. Rana scored 28 off 15 balls, hitting two fours and two sixes, and provided a late flourish to a collective effort that was desperate for one.

India scrambled, scratched, and scrambled some more to reach 269 for 8. From 124 for 6, it felt like a heist.

Alright, here’s the thing about Chamari Athapaththu - there isn’t another cricketer like her in Sri Lanka, and most probably even Asia. If you look around the world, you might find some with better skills, but none that have had to carry their team for this long. She’s 35, playing her last World Cup, but continues to be the centre of gravity for Sri Lankan women’s cricket.

Here’s Andrew Fidel Fernando with a statistical exclamation mark: “Sri Lanka have 11 ODI hundreds in total - Athapaththu has hit nine of those, including each of the top-seven highest individual scores. In T20Is, no other Sri Lanka batter has made triple figures, but Athapaththu alone has three, which places her equal-second in the world. In terms of just 50-plus scores, Athapaththu has 28 in ODIs. Siriwardene, the next-best again, has seven.”

Athapaththu opened the batting, and, along with Hasini Perera, set Sri Lanka off to a solid start. She carved Amanjot for a powerful four early in the innings. When Deepti Sharma came on with her spin, Athapaththu hit her for a six and a four, taking 11 runs from that over. With rain clouds swirling around the ACA Stadium, Sri Lanka kept at par with the asking run-rate, sometimes even slightly ahead. Which, for Harmanpreet and co, was beginning to look like a problem.

Then Deepti went round the wicket, drew Athapaththu into an expansive whip, and hit the timber. The big fish was gone. And slowly, as the rest of India’s spinners found their rhythm and angles, chipping away at the Sri Lankan batting without letting anyone go big, the game was packed and sealed.

It was a lovely day in Guwahati. Breezy and musical and festive. The dhaak of mahashtami could be heard through the broadcast when the stadium DJ gave his fingers a break. That said, the in-game playlist was almost exclusively filled with Zubeen bangers, so it wasn’t all that bad either. The official attendance said 22843 - about 60% of the stadium’s capacity. It felt a lot more at the afternoon’s peak and during the sparkling show in the mid-innings break. By the end of the evening, however, that 60% was barely 20, to which we must add the asterisk of a late weekday night - a pujo night, no less. Guwahati showed up when it mattered.

Objectively, coach Amol Muzumdar and captain Harmanpreet Kaur would both know that this game should’ve been a cruise, not a near-scrape. They had to be rescued by their lower order, hauled to a score that will certainly not prove enough against most of their next five opponents. On the flipside, they could also tick it off as pure tournament sport, a day of problems and solutions. It spoke volumes of their confidence that they had enough resources to rescue a situation against a ridiculously smart bowling lineup.

Onto Sunday then, against.. oh, come on man.