Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana, India’s senior women cricketers, are brimming with confidence in their team’s form and updated training methods as they aim to “break the barrier” and secure the country’s first-ever Women’s ODI World Cup title.
The 2025 tournament, set to begin on September 30, will feature eight teams, with India facing Sri Lanka in the opening match. India’s history at the event has been bittersweet—they failed to reach the semi-finals in 2022, while their best finishes came in 2005 and 2017 as runners-up, both under Mithali Raj’s captaincy. This time, playing at home, they believe the title is within reach.
“Playing in front of a home crowd, that is always special, and hopefully, this time we will give our 100% and try to break that barrier which all Indian fans and we are waiting for,” Harmanpreet said at an ICC event in Mumbai marking the 50-day countdown to the World Cup.
India’s form in 2025 has been outstanding, winning nine of their eleven ODIs. Their run includes a 3-0 whitewash of Ireland, a tri-series victory in Sri Lanka (involving South Africa), and most recently, a 2-1 series win in England, the second-ranked ODI side.
Asked about the team’s confidence heading into the tournament, Harmanpreet was emphatic:
“To be honest, very high – because the amount of cricket we have played in the last couple of years, that has really given us a lot of confidence. And touchwood, the way we are playing [for] the last couple of years, we just want to continue with that. I think it is all about mind-set and [the] fearless cricket we have been playing.”
Earlier this year, India also scripted history in England by winning both an ODI and a T20 series on the same tour, taking three out of five T20s.
“We were not surprised with the results [in England] because we knew the kind of preparation we have done,” Harmanpreet explained. “We knew that we can do this easily. I think we have been working very hard for it, but at the same time, we kept things very simple, and we knew that we can easily win any series or any tournament. We were only talking about how we can win, how we can improve ourselves. So, for us, it was not like we have done something great. [The result] was because of our routines and we want to keep doing the same things, again and again.”
Vice-captain Smriti Mandhana credited the team’s strong off-field work for their recent consistency.
“The amount of training we are doing and the efforts we are putting in our training camps, that is finally giving us a result and hopefully this World Cup will be very special for us,” she said. “In the last one-and-a-half months in the UK, I just felt that a lot of things—even off the field—were very right about the team, in terms of how everyone came together. We, as a team, are really big on it in terms [of how] we are working hard here each day, day in, day out.”
