Indian women’s cricket team created history by defeating South Africa by 52 runs at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, clinching their first-ever ICC Women’s ODI World Cup trophy.
With this monumental win, Harmanpreet Kaur became only the third Indian captain to lift an ODI World Cup trophy – joining the legendary Kapil Dev (1983) and MS Dhoni (2011) in an elite list of champions.
After the match, Harmanpreet and her team dedicated the triumph to women’s cricket pioneers Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, and Anjum Chopra, acknowledging their decades of effort in shaping the sport in India. The players made it a point to present the trophy to these legends as a mark of gratitude and respect.
Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami, who were part of the broadcast team for 2025 final, witnessed the emotional moment firsthand. Both had been instrumental in India’s earlier campaigns, including the 2005 and 2017 World Cups, where the team had come agonizingly close but missed the title.
“The last time, back in 2022, when we returned after the World Cup, all of us were really sad. We knew that it was the last World Cup for Jhulan di and Mithali di. Smriti and I were sitting and talking, we were sad that we couldn’t deliver it for them,” she said on the ICC Review.
“But we had decided that whenever we do it in the future, we will make sure that they would be in the stadium. We really want to capture that moment with them. Not only them, Diana (Edulji) ma’am was continuously messaging. Shubhangi (Kulkarni) ma’am, Sudha (Shah) ma’am, who was our coach when I made my debut,” she added.
‘Don’t think of this moment without them’
“Everybody was there. To share this moment with them was something really special to us. And whenever we were dreaming and visualising, they were actually with us. We didn’t think of this moment without them,” said Harmanpreet.
