What India’s World Cup win means for women’s cricket

India’s first victory in cricket’s Women’s World Cup will have huge ramifications for global order of the sport.

Harmanpreet Kaur’s team beat South Africa by 52 runs in yesterday’s final, in front of a deafening 45,000-strong crowd in Navi Mumbai – ending Australia’s decade-long dominance in the sport. With this milestone win, India’s women cricketers have “turned long-cherished dreams into reality” and “etched their names in history”, said The Hindustan Times.

It’s a “a wake-up call” for the rest of the world, and a win that could “spell the end for women’s cricket as we know it”, said Sonia Twigg in The Telegraph. India has become the the first country other than Australia or England to win a Women’s World Cup since 2000,and, with greater funding and increased home support, “it is hard to believe” their women cricketers “will stop there”.

‘New levels of stardom’

As Kaur clung on to her match-winning catch, India’s women cricketers entered a “brave new world”, said P.K. Ajith Kumar in The Hindu. Star players like Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma and Shafali Verma have become “household names” overnight, and been propelled to “new levels of stardom across India”.

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For Verma, the final’s Player of the Match, the path to yesterday’s success has been marked by significant setbacks. That “rollercoaster ride” began in the “conservative northern state of Haryana”, where, as a girl, she cut her hair short so she could play in the boys’ team, said Agence France-Presse. Her fearless batting soon led to her international debut at the age of 15, and she became the youngest cricketer to play in a women’s T20 for India. But she had recently fallen out of favour with the selectors, and was only in Sunday's final because a teammate had injured her ankle. Her 87 runs (from 78 balls) included her first 50 in three years – and made her, at 21 years and 278 days, the youngest person ever to hit a half-century in a Women’s World Cup final.

India were “late to develop the women’s game”, said Twigg in The Telegraph, and the last time the Women’s World Cup was held in India, in 2013, it “made barely a ripple” on the country’s consciousness. The national team was put up in a “budget hotel”, and had to warm up against under-16 and under-19 boys’ teams. The publicised venue for the final – Mumbai’s historic Wankhede Stadium – was even changed at the last minute to accommodate the men’s domestic Ranji Trophy final.

Belief ‘that women deserved more’

India’s victory on Sunday owes much to star performances by Verma and by Sharma (named Player of the Tournament) but many also attribute the team’s success to major administrative and strategic overhauls behind the scenes.

India’s win was a “vindication” for policy changes that “dared to believe women deserved more”, said Amar Sunil Panicker in India Today. In October 2022, the Board of Control for Cricket in India unanimously passed a resolution for pay parity between men and women. Women’s cricket in India was once defined by the “exceptionalism” of a few individuals who “succeeded despite the system”. Now, “for perhaps the first time, success feels like the result of the system working for them”.

More money is entering the women’s game globally, too. The Australian women’s Big Bash League doubled their team salary cap in 2023 and, last week, the organisers of The Hundred competition in England and Wales announced a 100% increase in the women’s salary pot for the 2026 season – though these salaries are still significantly behind those offered to male players.