Notes From the World Cup: World Champions

India vs South Africa, Final, Navi Mumbai

A few hours have passed since Nadine de Klerk mishit Deepti Sharma’s low, angled full toss to the outstretched hands of Harmanpreet Kaur. Sleep has been hard to come, but the heart-rate is back to normal. Outside my window, the city is back to its weekday morning rhythm, the streets to their melody.

How does one process the Sunday? The World Cup final-winning Sunday? How is one meant to? I keep thinking back to the pictures from last night, and the poetry in those confetti-sprinkled frames.

Harmanpreet and co. took the trophy to Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, and Anjum Chopra - all ex-captains - and asked them to lift it to the sky, as if to say, “This is your moment too.” Diana Edulji was in the stands, teary-eyed. There was once a time, not too long back, when the BCCI refused to associate itself with the women’s team. Shanta Rangaswamy, Diana Edulji, Anjum Chopra, Mithali Raj, and Jhulan Goswami forced the BCCI to pay attention. This moment was unmistakably theirs.

A wheelchair-bound Pratika Rawal was on the pitch. The ICC’s pages had her marked as “withdrawn”, as they do with anyone who gets injured midway through a tournament. Pratika’s replacement had practically won India the final. The team didn’t forget her. They brought her over to the dias when they lifted the World Cup. She was part of every picture, every selfie.

Amol Muzumdar wore a smile and spoke eloquently to the broadcasters, deflecting all praise to his charges. Rightfully so, you could say, but the backroom staff has their fingerprints on every trophy. As a 13-year-old, Amol Muzumdar was padded up for two days as two 15-year-olds, Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli, raised a then-world record partnership in a school tournament. Muzumdar later became a run-machine in Ranji Trophy, and yet, couldn’t break through to the national team. Not even once. He now has his name in Indian cricket history, as the coach who oversaw one of India’s great cricket moments.

Richa Ghosh spoke to Jatin Sapru about everyone in the team wanting to put their body on the line. On the night, she was the difference between India finishing with an easily-chaseable 275 and a short-but-competitive 298.

Richa was 2 when India played their first Women’s World Cup final; Shafali Verma and Shree Charani were 1; Pratika, Radha Yadav, Jemimah Rodrigues and Amanjot Kaur, 5. They watched the 2017 heartbreak on their television screens as teenagers. Shafali and Jemi were child prodigies destined for great things. Now they’re world champions, still at the morning of their international careers.

Smriti Mandhana finished second on the list for highest run-scorer at the World Cup, beaten only by the inevitable, incomparable Laura Wolvaardt. Many minutes after the presentation ceremony, as broadcasters hounded players and players got pictures clicked with their families, Smriti and Laura held each other in a tight embrace. The next five, seven, whatever years, they’ll light up the world.

A few metres away, Jemimah Rodrigues and Radha Yadav wrapped their hands around Marizanne Kapp. Wolvaardt and Kapp have now lost three World Cup finals in three years. Kapp will not play another ODI World Cup.

Shafali Verma was all smiles. One October afternoon last year, her phone buzzed: her father had suffered a heart-attack. Two days later, her phone buzzed again: she was dropped from India’s ODI team. A twenty-year-old’s world was rocked within fifty hours. She hid the team news from her father. Some time later, she went back to domestic cricket, to Haryana, and begun whacking the balls. In the Senior T20 Trophy and ODI Trophy, she piled them up like there was no tomorrow. One of those knocks was a 197 in 115 balls.

Lavanya Narayanan has written a beautiful profile here, where her coaches mention the work that’s gone into making this naturally front-foot batter play with a straighter bat and upright body.

One October afternoon this year, Shafali Verma’s phone buzzed again: board the flight to Mumbai. Pratika Rawal’s freak injury had left India short of an opener before their semi-final against Australia. A week from that phone call, Shafali was striding out to bat in the World Cup final, beside Smriti Mandhana. You’d have thought Smriti, experienced and composed, would have to play the lead role. Within five minutes of the start, Shafali stepped out of her crease to Marizanne Kapp of all bowlers. Yeah, screw the nerves, let’s win this shit.

She scored the most imperious 87, all straight bat and top-hand power, and the swagger of somebody who knew this is their day. Later in the evening, Harmanpreet threw the ball to her - why, nobody knows. Within her first seven deliveries, Shafali got India the wickets of Sune Luus and Marizanne Kapp, and wrecked South Africa’s chase. No biggie.

The list of women who have scored a half-century and taken two or more wickets in an ODI World Cup final: Shafali Verma and Deepti Sharma. Both on one blessed evening in Navi Mumbai.

Deepti Sharma was at Lord’s, on crease, and watched a World Cup final slip away from India’s grasp. She was at Melbourne, watching Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney break another dream. She was at Birmingham, in a repeat telecast of the Lord’s script, except against Australia this time. And she had been at Cape Town, not out, as another semi-final slipped from under India’s nose. She’d seen it all.

Here she was, in Mumbai, with a critical 50 and a five-wicket-haul in the World Cup final, and the World Cup’s Player of The Tournament. She’s still just 28. The World Cup finished with her delivery and Harmanpreet Kaur’s catch.

What about Harmanpreet Kaur then? Her coach Kamaldeesh Singh Sodhi remembers her as “a young girl wearing her school uniform with a dupatta tied around her waist was troubling senior boys with her pace at the Guru Nanak College ground in Moga, Punjab.”

She was part of a World Cup team that had their venues shifted because a state team wanted to play Ranji Trophy matches there. Four years later, Harmanpreet single-handedly drew attention back to Indian women’s cricket with an innings that will stay embedded in the memory of anyone remotely around a TV that afternoon.

Harmanpreet had been through four heartbreaks in ODI World Cups alone. As a captain, she’d endured more in T20 World Cups and the Commonwealth games. She’d tell Anjum Chopra in an interview later, “I sometimes thought, why was it just happening to me? To us?” Here she was, at 37. Anchor of the unbelievable semi-final chase. Catcher of the ball that sealed the World Cup. Lifter of that gleaming, elusive golden trophy.

Jatin Sapru reached to this line first, but I’ll steal it anyway: at the stroke of the midnight hour, Indian women’s cricket made their tryst with destiny.

What could this night mean? Like Prem Panicker writes here, “Somewhere, far from any stadium, a ten-year-old girl will stand before a mirror, plastic bat in hand, and whisper commentary to herself. She will not be told that cricket is a boy’s game. She will not be told that ambition needs to be apologetic. She will see, in these champions a foretaste of her own future — confident, visible, unafraid.”

Credit: Twitter

World Champions.