Harmanpreet Kaur, and the Mumbai vs Indians paradox
India's captain is in search of a legacy defining win. Her team needs the Harmonster that turns up for franchise, rather than the ordinary human that has done duty for country.
The Harmonster. Turn on a women’s game, and chances are Harmanpreet Kaur is playing. She has amassed more than 300 T20s alone, and 201 of them for India. That is more than anyone else.
Not just in the women’s game, but all of cricket. Rohit Sharma’s 159 seems anemic in comparison.
As captain, she won the coveted ODI World Cup on home soil last year, and she has two WPLs in her pocket. She was crowned Harmonster when she thumped an unbeaten 171 to change women’s cricket in 2017.
Her legacy is so huge that it demands books and movies. Lots of players are great, few shift the game. She knocked women’s cricket out of Derby and into the limelight.
Women’s cricket is in her shadow.
***
The T20 World Cup is a trophy that has evaded India’s women.
Their only final appearance was when Australia thrashed them in front of 86,000 people at the G. In 2023, they were inches away from the final; Harman’s bat got stuck in the pitch, and she was run out at a crucial juncture. Of course, it was versus Australia. India came close to beating them in a must-win clash in 2024 too, but fell short. This time, Harman was there till the end.
On Sunday, they face Australia again. An Australia, who don’t hold a World Cup in either format at the moment. And yet, strangely, they’re the best team in the world.
But since the heartbreaking loss for India at Sharjah in 2024, we have witnessed two versions of Harmanpreet Kaur, the T20 batter.
One that smashes sixes for Mumbai Indians, and the other that often gets out just before accelerating for India. With India’s backs against the wall after losing to South Africa, Harmanpreet’s team desperately needs the franchise Kaur to turn up.
Or, even just the old Indian one. Because her best years have arguably been wearing India’s blue. But not recently.
In the last two seasons of the WPL, Nat Sciver-Brunt is the only other batter with a higher true average and strike rate than Harman. Most of the players who score quicker are hovering around a neutral true average.
Bharti Fulmali is in the same cluster as her; she has less than two and a half times the runs, and bats at six or seven. What really sticks out is that the Indian captain is still among the best domestic players in the competition.
However, in T20Is, plenty of players have her covered on both metrics. Even the other two batters in her cluster score faster. On her team, only Deepti Sharma has a worse true strike rate, and she’s a proper all-rounder.
Since 2018, these are among two of the slowest years she’s ever had. Only 2020 was significantly worse. So this isn’t normal for her T20I career.
