Harmanpreet Kaur: The captain who changed how India’s women played cricket

For nine years, Harmanpreet Kaur’s career as captain of the Indian women’s cricket team teetered on the brink of near-misses and lingering deliberations.

The biggest question centred on an elusive maiden World Cup title and India’s failure to cross the final hurdle at major tournaments.

Their breakout run at the one-day international (ODI) World Cup ended in heartbreak in 2017, a year after Kaur was appointed captain in the Twenty20 format and earmarked to take over the reins across all formats of the game.

Under her leadership, India qualified for but lost their first T20 World Cup final in 2020 and ended with a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2022, before suffering another agonising T20 World Cup semifinal defeat in 2023.

In November 2025, the what-if was finally buried.

Kaur’s India beat then-defending champions Australia in a sensational come-from-behind World Cup semifinal before overcoming a resolute South Africa in the final to be crowned world champions for the first time – in front of adoring home fans.

Less than a year later, on October 6, 2026, Kaur stepped down as India’s all-format captain, ending a decade-long leadership journey that saw India transform into world champions after decades spent chasing cricket’s traditional heavyweights Australia and England.

“This is not an easy decision,” the 37-year-old wrote in an Instagram post, adding that she will continue to play international cricket. “As a captain, I have had to make difficult decisions. Decisions that were not always understood, not always easy, and sometimes came at a personal cost.”

The announcement was made after discussions on the future of Indian women’s cricket, which took place a day earlier between Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, head coach Amol Muzumdar and Devajit Saikia, honorary secretary of the Indian cricket board.

Mandhana, who was Kaur’s deputy for four years, replaced her as captain.

Kaur, India’s most capped women’s cricketer, enjoyed a leadership stint that included five Test matches, 51 ODIs and 155 T20Is, with win percentages of 80, 58.82 and 59.35 respectively.

The Punjab-born top-order batter’s last game in charge was the recently concluded Asian Games in Japan, where India stepped on the podium as gold medallists.

Nine days earlier, Kaur led them to an Asia Cup trophy in the United Arab Emirates.

The medals and trophies tell one part of Kaur’s tale as captain. The other lies in how India learned to play differently under her.

Big-hitting batter

Kaur took over as India’s full-time T20I captain in 2016, after the team’s disappointing group-stage exit at a home T20 World Cup.

It followed a match-winning innings that helped India win their first T20I series against Australia in any format, and a few months later, she was signed as the first Indian cricketer in the Big Bash League, Australia’s franchise T20 cricket competition

It did not take long for Kaur, the batter, to announce her intentions.

Facing the mighty Australia in the semifinal of the ODI World Cup in 2017, Kaur played an unbeaten innings of 171 that took India into the final and challenged long-held assumptions about the power and aggression an Indian batter could bring to the women’s game.

Following the World Cup runners-up finish, which is widely regarded as a defining moment in Indian women’s cricket, the top-order batter recalled how her father’s friends would discourage her from playing big shots, saying, “Why do you need to attempt big hits when you know girls do not have power to clear the rope?”

“After watching [the 2017] World Cup, they started believing maybe my teammates and I can clear the rope,” she said in an interview with The Cricket Monthly magazine.

Years later, former Australia captain Alyssa Healy made a telling observation about her contemporary’s influence on the Indian team.

“What she has done in leading this Indian side, and [a] new generation of Indian women into the modern game, has been amazing to watch,” Healy said in 2023, before India’s Test match against Australia at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

At her first T20 World Cup as full-time captain in 2018, Harmanpreet led India to their first semifinal in eight years, while scoring India’s first T20I century with a 51-ball 103 against New Zealand.

It set in motion an evolution in Indian women’s T20s, a format they had historically struggled in.

India’s strengths had been better suited to ODIs, making Kaur’s task of shepherding a younger side towards a more aggressive, modern T20 game crucial and timely.

In 2020, India went a step further in the T20 World Cup, reaching their first final, driven largely by 16-year-old batting all-rounder Shafali Verma and legspin bowler Poonam Yadav. Still, Australia overpowered them in front of a record 86,000-plus home crowd at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Despite her own poor performance in that tournament, Kaur evolved as a leader.

“Two or three years ago, I used to be a lot more aggressive on the field,” she said during the tournament.

“I used to lose my temper very quickly, but things have been changing within me. I have seen that change translate into results for me and the team.”

Then-India head coach WV Raman praised Kaur’s handling of a young side. “The most important thing as a captain is to make each member of the side realise that they are an integral part of that side,” Raman said. “In that regard, it was a challenge for her, but she has coped with it brilliantly.”

Raising the bar

Kaur inherited a T20I side in transition, with an influx of younger players bringing greater fearlessness and athleticism.

After heavy defeats against Australia and England in a home tri-series in 2018, she called for “fit players who can run all across the ground”.

Her attacking philosophy extended beyond the physical aspect of the game and instilled a conviction that India could beat Australia and England.

Following the retirement of India’s iconic captain Mithali Raj in 2022, Kaur enjoyed all-format captaincy for the first time.

In the same year, India travelled to England and shocked them with a 3-0 ODI series win for the first time in 23 years. Kaur scored a series-leading 221 runs, including an unbeaten 143 from 111 balls.

The final match of the series was played at Lord’s Cricket Ground and offered a glimpse of Kaur’s leadership skills.

India’s all-rounder Deepti Sharma ran out England’s Charlie Dean at the non-striker’s end for the final wicket of the match. When the dismissal, legal according to the rules of cricket, threatened to overshadow the series sweep, Kaur publicly stood by her player.

“Well, I thought you would ask about the first 10 wickets because they were not easy to take,” she told the host broadcaster, matter-of-factly, when questioned about the incident after the match. “I will back my player because I don’t think she has done something which is not in the ICC rules.”

From chasing the best to becoming the best

Despite their growth, India failed to get over the line in big finals.

Australia denied them a Commonwealth Games gold in 2022 and knocked them out of the 2023 T20 World Cup in the semifinals.

Embarrassingly, India exited the 2024 and 2026 editions of the T20 World Cup at the group stage.

But under Kaur’s captaincy, expectations rose as India continued to win bilateral series against England, Australia and South Africa.

And in 2025, India won the ODI World Cup.

There was a neat symmetry to Australia being their semifinal opponents. Eight years after Kaur’s 171 knocked Australia out of the 2017 World Cup, her 89 and Jemimah Rodrigues’s Player of the Match innings of 127 not out helped eliminate the same opponents.

Verma, the all-rounder whom Kaur backed at the 2020 T20 World Cup as a 16-year-old, was named the best player in the final and credited her captain after Kaur announced her decision to quit the role.

“Since the day I made my debut, you’ve always been there for me, on and off the field,” Verma wrote on social media. “You’ve led us through some incredible moments and helped shape the team we are today.”

The final weeks of Kaur’s captaincy brought more silverware, but against the backdrop of dwindling returns.

The calls for 30-year-old Mandhana to take over as captain grew louder.

The left-handed opener has been India’s best batter in the past two and a half years and recently broke the record for most runs in women’s cricket.

And with the inaugural ICC Women’s Champions Trophy, slated for early 2027, and the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics in sight, Mandhana was handed the reins.

At the end of her four-year run as India’s all-format leader, the defining image of Kaur’s captaincy will be her role in ending South Africa’s innings in last year’s World Cup final.

From cover, Kaur backtracked to catch Nadine de Klerk’s lofted shot, prompting wild celebrations.

Almost a decade since she was first entrusted with a leadership role, Kaur’s final act was to end the country’s agonising wait for a World Cup.