Armed force: Shafali Verma on breaking records and stereotypes

Imagine being 21, the youngest member of the India team, stepping out to bat at the Women’s World Cup cricket finals in Navi Mumbai in November last year, and hearing the crowds chant your name. No pressure, right? To the 55,000 people watching Shafali Verma live, and the 185 million following the match on screens, it really seemed like it.

Verma, however, wasn’t even supposed to be in this match. The selectors for the World Cup thought her form was inconsistent. She only got pencilled in, right before the semi-finals, to replace Pratika Rawal, who’d injured her ankle and knee. Weeks before the series, Verma had been journalling that her days of cricket were over. But on the pitch, she played as if she’d belonged there all along, self-doubt forgotten. Her 87 runs off 78 balls and two killer wickets when she bowled gave India the numbers it needed to beat South Africa that night, and lift the ICC Women’s World Cup trophy for the first time.

All through, fans in YouTube’s live comments were nominating Verma for Player of the Match. They got their wish. And for Verma, two months on, life has changed. She’s India’s darling – her cropped hair as easy to recognise off the field as her aggressive batting on it. She and the team have been showing up on TV shows, in ads, at A-list events and high-profile podiums. But who is Shafali Shafali Shafali, really?

Game face

Is 21 too young? It depends on whom you ask. At 21, American basketball player LeBron James was on his way to becoming an NBA star; Sachin Tendulkar had scored his first ODI century. Verma is getting there. She scored a double century in test cricket in June 2024, becoming only the second Indian woman to do so. “I’ve been ticking goals off my list that I didn’t even think were possible to set in the first place.”

Well before she turned 21, commentators have been reserving their most forceful descriptors – explosive, powerful, fearless – for her battling. Her teammates call it her Golden Arm. It comes with a not-so-golden back story. Verma grew up in a cricket-mad family in Rohtak, Haryana, obsessed with Sachin Tendulkar. She’d play cricket in fields, parks, under flyovers – anywhere she got a chance to swing a bat.

Then in 2013, when she was nine, her dad, jewellery-shop owner Sanjeev Verma, managed to wrangle two tickets for Tendulkar’s last domestic match – a sold out game that just happened to be in their hometown. “I don’t even know where my father got a ticket from! Sachin Tendulkar Sir came to the boundary wall to catch the ball, and I was right there, seeing him up-close for the first time. I began thinking, ‘If I want to be a cricketer someday, I’ll have to deal with crowds of this size’. I didn’t feel afraid, only excited.”

So, Verma cut her hair short – to pass off as a boy and attend cricket training and play local tournaments – and began practising with her father and elder brother, Sahil. The next to go was the fear of getting hurt on the field. And the next: Any interest in the townsfolk’s comments about a young woman with cricketing ambitions. Her dad, ever supportive, set down an ultimatum: Make it by age 19 or find something else to do.

He needn’t have worried. Verma made her T20 debut in 2019 against South Africa at age 15, becoming the youngest female player to do so. In a match against West Indies that year, Verma became the youngest Indian to score an international half-century, breaking Tendulkar’s 1989 record. “It’s fun to demolish people’s expectations of what a women cricketer should be,” she says. By 2025, when she played in the Women’s World Cup in Navi Mumbai, the stadium was packed just like it had been 12 years ago, when she first glimpsed Tendulkar.

It’s a match

Most 21-year-olds worry about whether they’ll make it in life. Verma’s biggest fear is that she’ll be benched while opportunities such as the World Cup pass by. When she was dropped from the national team in August last year, it devastated her. “I thought I would never get out of this phase; that it was the end of my cricket career,” Verma recalls. “I kept reminding myself that I was just 21, and that I had lots of time left.” But she kept training and her own resilience surprised her. “When I got the call telling me that I was to play after all, it was the happiest moment.”

Verma’s teammate, left-handed batter Smriti Mandhana, 29, would understand. Mandhana nearly missed the 2017 Women’s World Cup because of an injury. Verma often goes to her when she wants to “polish up my game, or chat about life”. The 15-member squad is tight. Wicketkeeper Richa Ghosh is only a year older and also honed her skills by playing against boys back home in Siliguri, West Bengal. Wicketkeeper-batter Uma Chetry, 23, grew up idolising MS Dhoni as much as Verma does. “When I want to chill and joke around and not think about cricket, I hang out with Renuka [Singh Thakur, 30, bowler]. We gym together too. She’s super chill.”

But they freak out equally before a big game. “The days before the match are the hardest, because you can’t do anything without thinking of what’s to come,” Verma says. “Moments before batting, we are all asking each other ‘What will happen? What will we do if things get bad?’ We can tell when someone is freaking out, and when to go and just snap them out of it by placing a hand on their shoulder,” she says. Verma cried for two nights before the November finals, overthinking every possible scenario. “I just look for someone in the team to talk to so I can keep the thoughts from piling up,” she says. “When your teammates are your friends, the game is less intimidating.”

These are brave admissions to make. And it’s no surprise that they come from the women’s team. “There’s often a stereotype that women’s cricket is less aggressive or that batters are more conservative,” says Verma. “That’s worked in my favour because I’ve always played my natural attacking game. When people don’t expect that intensity or power, it allows me to express myself freely and go all out.”

Strike back

Verma has inherited a game that’s different from her older teammates. For one thing, it’s rare for male audiences to be this excited about a women’s team. It’s also a team that actually had a generation of older women cricketers to look up to. Verma knows that kids are watching her, just as she watched Tendulkar in 2013. When they were playing the T20 matches against Sri Lanka in December, a little girl came up to her and told her she was her hero. “When a girl holds a bat, she now has a woman cricketer as inspiration,” says Verma.

She’ll never forget the moment after the World Cup win, when she went back to Rohtak. “Streets and schools had been shut. Everybody was out, celebrating.” The naysayers who’d balked at the idea of a girl taking up cricket now claim that they knew she was destined for success. “That shook me up a little,” Verma recalls. “That was the moment I realised that no one will compare men’s cricket and women’s cricket now. We’d become heroes.”

From HT Brunch, January 17, 2026

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