India's professional World Cup win

This team of champions is not just standing on the shoulders of giants; the previous players were world builders.

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South Africa really need runs from the top, their batting is shallow in the middle. But the Indian quicks have started well; the scorecard reads 26/0 after the first six overs.

Tazmin Brits is the standard deviation queen. She has a world-record five ODI hundreds in 2025, but as many single-digit scores. Her numbers scream “all or nothing”. The former javelin thrower is on 7*(20); so India have kept the squeeze on. But she breaks free, smoking her first six down the ground off Renuka Singh. She then does it again off Deepti Sharma two overs later, this time using her feet to pick up a four.

Brits is hitting them straight and clean, in a way that terrifies Indian bowlers.

Not only has she started accelerating, but her partnership with Laura Wolvaardt is also blossoming. They’re 51 for no loss in 9.2 overs. Indian fans are starting to worry now.

Brits goes on the backfoot and tries to steal a quick single off Renuka. But the ball goes towards Amanjot Kaur at mid-on.

Amanjot is confident; India slipped from 120/2 to 124/6 in the first match of the World Cup against Sri Lanka, yet she made a half-century at slightly above a run a ball. In the post-match presser, she said, “How can India be in trouble, when I was still to bat?”

The 25-year-old all-rounder from Chandigarh had initially started as a skater and hockey player, before eventually taking to cricket - says Indian Express’ Nitin Sharma. One of the basics of being good at skating is balance.

Amanjot is fast to react, She has a stump and a half to aim at, yet she absolutely nails it. The kind of thing that amateurs find hard, but her athleticism, balance and training have meant she can pick up a ball and hit a small target on the move. That’s professionalism.

In 2017, the Indian fans only got nervous late in the game, when the collapse was in full swing. Before that, it was all found money. Prior to the World Cup, fans knew of Jhulan Goswami and Mithali Raj, and maybe stories of how good the Aussies were. But this was new to them, as many had jumped on after the innings that made Harmanpreet Kaur the Harmonster a few days earlier.

This time in 2025, they were the favourites in the big match. The players were known to them, they’d probably seen their matches, or at the very least the WPL headlines. And so they felt nerves in a way they never had eight years earlier.

So this run-out went beyond fear; it was about control, athleticism and balance. Professionalism that brought joy.

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Marizanne Kapp won her country a World Cup semi-final with quick runs and a fifer. But for the final, her swing hasn’t shown up. Shafali Verma takes down her Delhi Capitals teammate for a couple of boundaries early in the innings, calming the Indian fan’s nerves.

But it isn’t even the only time she would win this battle. Harmanpreet Kaur’s move to get Shafali on to bowl also comes off superbly. After Shafali gets Sune Luus out caught and bowled, she follows it up with a rank bad ball down the legside to get the big wicket of Kapp. And that matters, because the openers and Kapp account for over 55% of South Africa’s runs in all the matches they played together after the 2022 edition.

Kapp is the backbone of this team, and Shafali just snapped the spine.

Before her call up to the squad for the World Cup knockouts, Shafali last played an ODI a year earlier. During the mega event, she was piling on the runs and also picking up wickets in the Senior Women’s T20 trophy. She’s too good for domestic cricket, but not good enough yet to nail ODIs.

To argue against that, Shafali Verma put in her career-best performance with bat and ball in a World Cup final.

And she did so as an opener, yet it was another opening partnership that built their foundation.

Smriti Mandhana is one of the best ODI batters in the world, but individual greatness doesn’t always translate to titles in a team sport. But when paired with Pratika Rawal, India now had another batter that could pile on the runs consistently.

At this point, her psychology degree has been discussed to death. But Vinayakk Mohanarangan sheds some light on her makings as a batter. He talks about the time her father gave her 400-500 throwdowns per day in the nets on her terrace during the pandemic. She looks like someone who has done the reps, a batter who could read and react to a ball even if someone was tickling her.

Within a year, she has become the joint-quickest to get to 1000 runs in the history of women’s ODIs. But crucially for the team, her partnership with Smriti is a massive success. In just 23 partnerships, they’ve already crossed hundred seven times. Rachel Haynes and Alyssa Healy got as many in 29, while Laura Wolvaardt and Lizelle Lee took more than twice the innings.

India have had classical batters before - after all, it’s the land of Mithali Raj - and Rawal perfectly fits that mold. Yet, this foundation fell apart when she was injured, and India won the knockouts.

One reason was Verma’s final, but also Jemimah Rodrigues in the semi. Growing up in the streets of Bandra, Mumbai, she played multiple sports. She went a step further than her teammate Amanjot, actually representing her state in hockey U-17s.

Earlier in the year, she talked to Cricket with JB. What struck instantly was the preparation for adapting her technique across varying conditions. It’s clear she is someone who thinks about cricket very deeply.

Despite all that, she was actually dropped against England in this World Cup. But when she returned in a must-win clash against New Zealand, the openers set such a massive platform that India could promote her at No.3. She made an unbeaten 76 off 55 without hitting a single six - which shows her incredible ability to find fours and rotate strike.

And the latter would prove to be the single most important thing about her semi-final ton. That knock is right up there as one of the best by an Indian in World Cup knockouts, perhaps only second to Harmanpreet’s 171*.

Harleen Deol was the No.3 before the New Zealand match. Back in 2021, she made headlines for the epic catch she took on the boundary line in England. She was born in Chandigarh, but she was selected for HPCA U-19 Academy and had to move to Dharamsala. When India wanted more bowling, she made way.