Harmanpreet Kaur: India’s Trailblazing Women’s Cricket Captain

Talent was never Harmanpreet Kaur’s problem. Her career is a story of persistence: five 50-over World Cups, two lost world finals, a decade of near misses, and a trophy that arrived eight years after the innings that made her a star. She entered international cricket when women’s cricket in India had fewer professional opportunities, little live coverage and almost no commercial market. She left the captaincy with a World Cup winners’ medal, a professional league built around players like her, and a team that now expects to win.

Harmanpreet Kaur Bhullar was born on 8 March 1989 in Moga, Punjab, to Harmandar Singh Bhullar, a former sportsman who worked as a clerk at a local court, and Satwinder Kaur. There was no girls’ cricket set-up nearby. She played with boys, and later trained at the Gian Jyoti School academy, about 30 km from home, under coach Kamaldeesh Singh Sodhi. She has described long journeys to practice, sometimes with her father when there was no other way to get there.

She moved through Punjab age-group and senior cricket in the mid-2000s, already known for hitting the ball further than most of her team-mates and for useful off-spin. In early 2009, still 19, she was picked for India’s World Cup squad in Australia.

She made her ODI debut against Pakistan at Bradman Oval, Bowral, on 7 March 2009, the day before her 20th birthday, bowling four overs for ten runs. India finished third. In June she played her first T20I, against England at Taunton, in the first Women’s World T20. For the next few years she was a middle-order batter and part-time spinner in a team built around Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami.

Leadership came early and by accident. In the 2012 Women’s T20 Asia Cup final in Guangzhou, the first Asia Cup played in the T20 format, both Mithali and Jhulan were injured. Harmanpreet, 23, captained India in a low-scoring final: India made only 81 and then dismissed Pakistan for 63 to win by 18 runs. When responsibility arrived, she did not run from it.

Her first ODI hundred followed against England at the Brabourne Stadium in February 2013, in a home World Cup where India finished a disappointing seventh. In 2014 she moved to Mumbai to work for Indian Railways, the strongest team in Indian women’s domestic cricket, and in August she won her first Test cap in a six-wicket win over England at Wormsley.

In June 2016 Sydney Thunder signed her for the Women’s Big Bash League, making her the first Indian woman to join an overseas T20 franchise. The move gave her something domestic cricket at home could not: a full season against the world’s best T20 players. She made 296 runs at 59.20 with a strike rate around 117, took six wickets, and was named Thunder’s player of the tournament.

The same year she became India’s full-time T20I captain, with Mithali Raj staying in charge of the ODI side. The WBBL did not create the 171 that followed, but Australian commentators and Mithali Raj both pointed to it as the place where her batting changed gear.

India met six-time champions Australia in the World Cup semi-final at Derby. Rain cut the game to 42 overs a side, and India were 35/2 when Harmanpreet walked in. What followed was one of the great one-day innings: 171 not out from 115 balls, with 20 fours and 7 sixes. She reached 100 from 90 balls and scored her last 71 from 25. India made 281/4; Australia were bowled out for 245 and India won by 36 runs.

It was not just a big score. It was a visibility explosion. Millions of Indian viewers, many watching women’s cricket for the first time, saw an Indian woman take apart the best team in the world. The innings is still the highest in a Women’s World Cup knockout match, and the highest by an Indian in a Women’s World Cup.

Three days later, at Lord’s, India reached 191/3 chasing England’s 228, with Harmanpreet making 51. They then lost seven wickets for 28 and were beaten by nine runs. Her career would become a story not only of extraordinary innings but of coming back after extraordinary disappointment.

At the 2018 Women’s World T20 in the West Indies she opened India’s campaign with 103 from 51 balls against New Zealand at Providence, Guyana, the first T20I hundred by an Indian woman, with eight sixes. India won by 34 runs and topped their group before England beat them in the semi-final. In 2019 she became the first Indian cricketer, of either sex, to play 100 T20Is.

At the 2020 T20 World Cup in Australia her side broke a long semi-final barrier. India beat the hosts by 17 runs in the opener at Sydney, won all four group games, and went through to their first Women’s T20 World Cup final when the semi against England was washed out. On 8 March 2020, her 31st birthday, more than 86,000 people at the MCG watched Australia win by 85 runs. India had moved from semi-final frustration to a final appearance. Winning one was the next step.

Mithali Raj retired from international cricket in June 2022 and Harmanpreet became ODI captain. She then led India in Tests too, and in December 2023 her side beat England by 347 runs and Australia by eight wickets, India’s first Test win over Australia in women’s cricket. She was now responsible for selection conversations, tactics, young players, three formats and the expectations that came with all of them.

The early results were close but not quite enough. India took silver at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, losing the final to Australia by nine runs after her 65. In September 2022 her 143 not out at Canterbury set up India’s first ODI series win in England since 1999, and in October India won the Asia Cup. At the 2023 T20 World Cup India lost the semi-final to Australia by five runs, with Harmanpreet run out for 52 when her bat stuck in the turf.

There was a low point too. In July 2023, after the final ODI in Bangladesh, the ICC suspended her for two matches for hitting the stumps on being given out and criticising the umpiring. The ban kept her out of the first two games of the Hangzhou Asian Games, where she returned for the final and India won gold.

The Women’s Premier League changed the economics of the women’s game in India. Mumbai Indians bought Harmanpreet for Rs 1.8 crore at the first auction and made her captain, and on 26 March 2023 MI beat Delhi Capitals by seven wickets to win the inaugural title. Royal Challengers Bengaluru, led by Smriti Mandhana, won in 2024. In March 2025 Harmanpreet’s 66 from 44 balls set up an eight-run win over Delhi in the final and made her the first captain to win the WPL twice. RCB won again in 2026.

She came into the 2025 World Cup, co-hosted by India, having played in four previous editions. Her first had been in 2009. Sixteen years later she was chasing the same trophy.

The semi-final in Navi Mumbai on 30 October was against Australia again. Australia made 338. India were 59/2 when Harmanpreet joined Jemimah Rodrigues, and together they added 167. She made 89; Rodrigues finished unbeaten on 127; India reached 341/5 with nine balls to spare, the highest successful chase in women’s ODIs and Australia’s first World Cup defeat since Derby in 2017.

On 2 November 2025, at the DY Patil Stadium, India made 298/7 against South Africa, built on Shafali Verma’s 87 and Deepti Sharma’s 58. Laura Wolvaardt’s 101 kept South Africa in the chase until Deepti took 5/39. South Africa were all out for 246 and India won by 52 runs. The final wicket was a skied catch taken by Harmanpreet to dismiss Nadine de Klerk. The player who had left Lord’s heartbroken in 2017 was holding the trophy.

She became the first Indian woman to captain India to a senior World Cup title, and the third Indian captain to win the 50-over World Cup, after Kapil Dev in 1983 and MS Dhoni in 2011. Her 331 runs in World Cup knockout matches are also a record.

The final year in charge was about longevity, and it was not all triumph. She was named for the Padma Shri on 25 January 2026. On 19 February, in a T20I against Australia in Canberra, she played her 356th international, passing Suzie Bates as the most-capped player in women’s cricket. On 21 June, against South Africa at Old Trafford, she became the first cricketer to play 200 T20Is.

That T20 World Cup in England ended badly. India won three of five group games but lost their last one to Australia by six wickets at Lord’s, despite her 56 from 27 balls, and missed the semi-finals. Australia went on to win the title.

The response came in Asia. At the Women’s Asia Cup in Dubai, on 5 September, she became the first cricketer to captain a country in 150 T20Is and hit the winning runs as Pakistan were bowled out for 55. On 13 September India beat Sri Lanka by 72 runs in the final for an eighth Asia Cup. Then, at the Aichi–Nagoya Asian Games in Japan, India met Sri Lanka again in the final at Nisshin on 22 September: India 216/3, Sri Lanka 69 all out, a 147-run win and India’s second straight Asian Games gold. It was her last match as captain.

After a BCCI review meeting in Guwahati to assess the team’s recent results, Harmanpreet announced on 6 October 2026 that she was stepping down as captain across all formats. “Captaincy ends. The journey continues,” she wrote. The same day the BCCI named Smriti Mandhana, her long-time deputy, captain in Tests, ODIs and T20Is. It was not a retirement: Harmanpreet stays in the India side as a player, and India’s next assignment is a home series against Zimbabwe from 16 October.

Harmanpreet Kaur’s career cannot be reduced to 171*, and it cannot be reduced to a World Cup trophy either. Her real achievement is the distance between those two moments. In 2017 she played an innings that seemed capable of changing how India saw women’s cricket. In 2025 she lifted the trophy that had escaped her. In 2026 she handed over the captaincy after another Asian Games gold, and chose to stay on as a player.

She didn’t just captain India’s women. She helped lead Indian women’s cricket from asking for recognition to expecting to win.