Shortest Format, Longest Wait: India dare to dream as another trophy beckons

India arrive at the T20 World Cup as ODI World Champions. With that title comes a world of confidence that they’ll be hoping to use to reverse their fortunes in the shortest format and finally get their hands on the elusive trophy.

The T20 World Cup is the most coveted prize in women’s cricket, but for India, it has been its most persistent tormentor. Despite coming painfully close on multiple occasions, the Women in Blue have never won the competition. They failed to make it past the group stage in 2012, 2014 and 2016, the lattermost proving particularly painful as they bowed out as humbled hosts.

2016 proved to be a turning point. A change at the helm saw Harmanpreet Kaur assume the T20I captaincy, and glory in the T20 Asia Cup heralded the first signs of a new India. Her appointment saw India reach the semi-finals in three consecutive T20 World Cups, barring the last one in 2024. A large part of India’s success under Kaur can be attributed to her aggression and fearless attitude, which has held the team in good stead. With the nature of the sport evolving at a breakneck pace towards big-hitting, she has complemented her explosive style with maturity and calm batting, all the while backing young players to play their natural game with confidence. When Shafali Verma made her way into the squad in 2019, Kaur made it a point to give her complete freedom to play her natural attacking game without fear of failure. She has also been vocal about building a team where each individual clearly knows their role, and that has reflected in India playing some of their best cricket under her tenure.

India reached the semifinals in 2018, but narrowly lost to England by four runs. In 2020, they went a step further, making it to the final in Melbourne. However, it turned out to be a one-sided affair against the hosts; Beth Mooney and Alyssa Healy took the Aussies to a competitive total of 184, before the Indian top-order collapsed for 99 in front of a record crowd of 86,174 at the MCG. Again in 2023, in Cape Town, India battled to the semifinals and were knocking on the door of a second consecutive final. The game looked like it was going India's way, but an unfortunate run out for Kaur in the fifteenth over, after her bat got stuck in the pitch while attempting a second run, swung the pendulum in Australia's favour. India lost the contest in agonising fashion, by just five runs.

Near-misses and heartbreaks have proved the pattern of India’s long pursuit of T20I glory. But if there is any year in which they arrive with better odds, it is this one. Kaur is now leading the side for a fifth time in the T20 World Cup, and coming fresh off a historic ODI World Cup victory, following which she was awarded the Padma Shri, joining former greats Diana Edulji, Jhulan Goswami, Anjum Chopra and Mithali Raj as other recipients. She was also honoured with a stand named after her at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur, New Chandigarh, in December 2025.

The ODI World Cup win transformed the perception of the sport, elevating the women’s team to the forefront of the public consciousness and creating huge support going into the T20 WC. Since raising the trophy, Kaur has maintained one eye on the shorter format. In a column for the ICC website, she reflected, "We would like to carry forward the confidence and belief from that win into the T20 World Cup. While the 2025 World Cup win gave us immense joy, it also gave us responsibility. We know expectations will rise, and that brings pressure, of course, but it is a good kind of pressure."

If confidence is required, India will need every bit of it. They have been drawn into one of the most demanding groups in the history of the Women’s T20 World Cup, alongside Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Netherlands. Any run to the final will also mean battling past heavyweights England and New Zealand.

The captains pose with the ICC T20 World Cup trophy. (Photo/ICC)

While India chase a first T20 world title, defending champions New Zealand arrive carrying a different kind of pressure. For Sophie Devine, Suzie Bates and Lea Tahuhu, this tournament will be their last in international cricket. Devine's exit closes a 20-year career, with the feat of being one of only two women to score 3,000 runs and take 100 wickets in T20 Internationals. For Devine, Bates, so long the linchpin of the batting lineup, and Tahuhu, who has anchored the White Fern’s pace attack for over a decade now with her searing pace, the goal is simple: win back-to-back titles, and bow out on a high.

Australia, who beat India in the 2020 final, have lifted the trophy six times, twice as many as all the other champions. However, in four out of those six campaigns, they were led by the now-retired Meg Lanning. Alyssa Healy, Lanning’s successor, couldn’t manage to win the 2024 edition during her tenure as captain (she was also sidelined by a foot injury). Sophie Molineux, recently appointed as Australia’s all-format captain, thus finds herself presented with a big challenge to continue their legacy in the tournament. Meanwhile, the void left by Healy’s absence at the top of the order has been filled by youngster Georgina Voll, who has proven herself more than capable of giving Australia those blistering starts. Voll currently sits atop the T20I Batting rankings, with fellow opener Beth Mooney in second place. Australia also boast a dominant record of 27-9 in head-to-head T20Is against India, though India did dethrone them in the ODI format earlier this year and will draw confidence from their 2-1 series win over Australia in February on their own turf.

South Africa have now appeared in two consecutive World Cup finals, unfortunately losing both. They will be highly motivated to shed the "chokers" tag going into this tournament, and the form of Captain Laura Wolvaardt, one of the best batters and leaders of the modern game, will be their biggest weapon. Wolvaardt, currently ranked 3rd in the world, has been the epitome of consistency, averaging 38.92 across her 98 T20I caps. In the 2025 ODI World Cup, she broke the record for the most runs scored in a single Women's World Cup edition, scoring 571 runs in 9 matches. Equally key will be the vast experience of pace veterans Marizanne Kapp and Shabnim Ismail. Ismail, the Proteas’ leading pace bowler, has reversed her retirement at the age of 37, in the hope of winning her team their first ever T20 World Cup. India will hope to turn the tables around after their forgettable 4-1 home series loss to South Africa in April earlier this year.

India just wrapped up a three-match T20 series tour of England, where they were defeated 2-1 by the hosts. They won the first match convincingly but were out-bowled and out-batted in the subsequent matches. Openers Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma, who have been so vital to India's batting line-up, struggled to find their rhythm for much of the series, averaging 13.3 and 11.6 runs respectively. A strong positive was the performance of the middle order, particularly Yastika Bhatia and Jemimah Rodrigues, who often managed to decently rebuild after a poor start. In fact, Bhatia finished as the highest run getter across both teams in the series. Verma, who was not initially in the ODI World Cup squad but made a good cameo towards the end as an injury replacement for Pratika Rawal, will be hoping to come good for India this tournament, having been chosen ahead of Rawal, who was India’s second-highest run getter in last year's competition.

Three new names feature on the roster for this summer’s showpiece, with Nandani Sharma, who picked up 17 wickets in 10 matches for Delhi Capitals in the 2025/26 Women’s Premier League and finished as the joint-highest wicket taker, being the most prominent. Nandani, who also took the first-ever hat-trick for an Indian bowler in the WPL, replaced the injured Amanjot Kaur for the England tour and began her international career with four wickets across the three games. Another new name is Shreyanka Patil, who has developed into a reliable spin option and lower-order contributor after making her name through the league and has now become a mainstay for the team. Bharati Fulmali, who made her international debut in 2019, finally makes a comeback into the squad after an explosive season with the Gujarat Titans in 2024/25, averaging 66.50 with a strike rate of 172.72. Her contributions with Deepti Sharma and Richa Ghosh in the lower order will be crucial to India’s success.

The selection of breakout stars from the WPL highlights the high optimism that the growing influence and success of the tournament has provided going into this year’s World Cup. The way the Indian Premier League once transformed men's cricket by turning domestic unknowns into household names, flooding the sport with investment and giving fans a franchise to belong to, the Women's Premier League has done the same for women's cricket. It has given India's women a stage with packed stadiums and prime-time television that the bilateral series often failed to do. For long, the IPL served as the breeding ground for young talent that eventually seeped into the men's national side, nurturing the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav and more. The WPL has followed the same path, and the fruits of that are now boarding a flight to England.

The women’s game is growing, and at a rapid pace. A little over a year ago, if you asked an RCB fan how many trophies their franchise had won, they would have smiled that tired, fond smile, perfected over years of glorious heartbreak and replied, "One." If you ask the same question today, you'll hear a different kind of response. You'll hear, with a flicker of pride, "Four trophies. Two in the IPL and two in the WPL." The RCB faithful, long starved of silverware, now count women's trophies in the same breath as men's without hesitation. Perhaps the 17-year drought has sharpened the appetite, but that is only part of the reason. It points to a fundamental rewiring of how an entire cricket-mad country thinks about the women's game.

It is worth saying how heartening it is to see women's cricket finally step into the light it has long deserved. I remember a time, not long ago, when women's cricket occupied the margins of India's sporting imagination. But it would be too simple, and slightly misleading, to frame this only as a story about gender. It is a story about visibility, about what happens when talent is finally given a stage large enough to match it. It is also a story about the narrowness of the light we choose to shine, and more broadly, about how we have trained ourselves to see excellence through a very particular lens, and what it might mean to widen it. Whether it extends further to other sports and athletes is a question worth sitting with, but that’s a topic for another article altogether.

India’s women cricketers have cracked something open. Six months ago, reflecting on the significance of the ODI World Cup victory, I wrote:

Today, somewhere, a little girl is going to sleep not with a Sachin jersey, not with a Rohit jersey, but with a Harmanpreet jersey, knowing she no longer has to dream quietly, knowing she can wear that jersey with pride, knowing she too can believe that she can play cricket for India.

This summer, they go in search of another trophy. And if they find it at Lord's on July 5, it will not simply confirm that Indian women's cricket has arrived. That debate is already over.

It will confirm that it is here to stay.

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Edited by Aneek Chatterjee and Maleah Mehta.

All statistics from ESPN Cricinfo.