Shafali Verma Exclusive: ‘I cried for two nights before final’ — star batter on shock call-up, self-belief and a World Cup rebirth

Key Highlights

• Shafali Verma, the 21-year-old hard-hitting sensation of the Indian women’s team, became the toast of the nation on 2 November when the Women in Blue lifted their first-ever cricket World Cup after defeating South Africa in Navi Mumbai. It feels unimaginable that she hadn’t even been part of the original squad.
• Shafali’s form before her last ODI in 2024 had been patchy and inconsistent, but the manner in which she was picked and dropped from the ODI setup has never been examined closely enough.
• Still, life always finds a way to hand out second chances.
• For someone as young as the Rohtak batter, redemption felt inevitable — but the way it unfolded was nothing short of a Bollywood-style twist. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS ADA nasty ankle injury to opener Pratika Rawal during a dead-rubber group match against Bangladesh forced the team management into a late change: not just adding Shafali to the squad, but thrusting her straight into the playing XI.
• The rest, as they say, is history.