indian-cricket-team – Chasing Tales

My Immortals

There are moments in life that are too difficult to put into words. Print isn’t enough to hold them. India’s women cricketers winning their ODI semi final against the mighty, seemingly invincible Australians was that moment for me.¹ I knew we would win the world cup now. And I knew how much was about to change.

Later, on November 2, 2025, old heartbreaks from 2005 and 2017 had no place on the sofa with me as India walked out in blue, one more time, with one more chance not to be a beautiful tragedy. This time the World Cup was not in distant England or New Zealand; it was in our messy, noisy backyard, under floodlights that bounced off the Arabian Sea, and losing the toss was just par for the course now, not a death knell for dreams.²

Every fan carries a private pantheon. Let’s talk about some of mine: women who did not wait for the world to be ready for them.

Earlier
There is Mithali Raj, who spent two decades carrying Indian batting on her back, walking in that day not as a story in progress but as a living archive. She did not give speeches about revolution; she just kept showing up, year after year, with a straight drive that made time slow down: her 409 runs in 2017 stood as India’s World Cup record until Smriti broke it in 2025.³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ In my mind, she is the one who quietly set the table so that others could feast.

There is Jhulan Goswami, the long run‑up that felt like a pilgrimage and the wrist that could still snap a ball past the best batters in the world. Watching her in 2017⁷ ⁸ was like watching a bridge between eras: one foot in the days when women’s cricket hardly existed on TV, the other in an era she would not fully get to enjoy but had made possible. In a 20-year international career she took a record 255 ODI wickets for India.⁹ ¹⁰

Long ago
Shantha Rangaswamy captained India’s first women’s Test side in the 1970s,¹¹ ¹² scoring 6¹³ Test fifties and a hundred while also opening the bowling (21 Test wickets),¹³ and later became the first woman to receive the Arjuna Award for cricket.¹¹

Diana Edulji learned her craft bowling at boys in Badhwar Park,¹⁴ then became India’s slow left‑arm heartbeat for nearly two decades, captaining the side and taking 63 official Test wickets—still the most by any Indian woman—and 46 ODI wickets.¹⁵ She also fought equally hard off the field, using her long Railways career and later her role in the BCCI’s Committee of Administrators to push for jobs, contracts, and dignity for women cricketers.¹⁶ ¹⁷ ¹⁸

There are so many others who have built the spine of women’s cricket in this country vertebrate by vertebrate: Shubhangi Kulkarni, leg‑spinner and administrator, keeping the game alive in committee rooms;¹⁹ Sandhya Agarwal²⁰ and Anju Jain,²¹ scoring in forgotten World Cups; Purnima Rau²² ²³ and Neetu David,²⁴ taking wickets and then quietly building the teams that would come after them; Anjum Chopra, captaining in the lean years and then talking women’s cricket into Indian living rooms.²⁵

Now²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹
But this tournament had others now- Deepti, Smriti, Amanjot, Richa, Shafali, Pratika, Jemima.

If Deepti was the tournament’s quiet star with 215 runs and 22 wickets, Smriti was the metronome- India’s highest run getter with 434 and multiple catches. Both determinedly carrying this country, up the massive Everest of a home world cup.

Shafali made 199 in just the two matches she played, with that 87 in the final… but my favourite Shafali moment has to be how she was grinning already while anticipating Sune Luus’ catch.

Pratika’s 308 runs, the second‑highest tally for India constantly helped us open (hehe) doors into the match, and who knows how many the poor kid may have had if she hadn’t been injured right at the precipice of the Cup itself?

Jemi made 292 runs, including an unbeaten 127 in the semi‑final vs Australia… in many ways she’s the one who won us the tournament. Her self belief through that match, her bravery through the tournament and even in the press conferences, constantly belied by her jolly nature… Perhaps she’s opened another door for us: talking so openly about mental health in cricket, for cricketers.³⁰

235 runs, with 12 sixes, the most by an Indian in the tournament: Richa Ghosh, keeper-bat par excellence.

Amanjot’s World Cup began with crisis. In the opener against Sri Lanka, India slid from 120 for 2 to 124 for 6, and a quiet stadium in Guwahati felt like it was reliving every old nightmare. On debut, she walked in next to Deepti and hit 57 off 56 – her maiden ODI fifty – in a 103‑run stand that yanked India to safety,³¹ ³² and later, in the final against SA, Wolvardt’s outrageous, tumbling catch that essentially won us the match and the Cup… you know the one.³³ Those are what I remember.

Sneh’s most talked‑about spell came against Pakistan, in a game that could easily have become sticky. She bowled eight overs for just two wickets on paper, but the control was the real story: a chokehold that kept the chase at arm’s length.

Radha had to wait, watching the first six matches from the bench while everyone discussed India’s “settled XI”. When she finally got her chance against Bangladesh, she made it impossible to ignore her again: 3 for 30, plus a brilliant direct‑hit run‑out. That performance is what pushed her name back into the semi‑final conversation and reminded everyone that India’s spin depth now extends all the way to the dugout.

Renuka’s World Cup was all about the early overs. Even when she went wicketless, like against Pakistan and England, she strangled the run rate – 2.9 an over in one match, 4.6 in another – so that chases never got to breathe. Her new‑ball spell against New Zealand, where she combined discipline with two top‑order wickets, set up the very platform from which Smriti and Pratika later tore the game away.

Harleen, who once went viral for that impossible boundary catch in England,³⁴ spent this World Cup doing the unglamorous versions of the same thing – sharp stops in the ring, calm hands on the rope, and those 20‑run cameos in the middle order that stop an innings from fraying.

Arundhati’s spells were often shorter, sharper: two‑ and three‑over bursts in the middle that changed the mood of an innings more than the scorecard, the kind of work you only notice when it’s missing. But her contribution often also came as that player who wasn’t in the XI, and still carried the team’s attitude. So brilliant.

Sree became one of those quiet tournament stories that suddenly erupts into view at the end. The 21‑year‑old left‑arm spinner from Kadapa took 14 wickets across the World Cup, leading India’s spin tally and being welcomed home to Andhra Pradesh like a local folk hero- as she should be.

Kranti’s World Cup became a small‑town fairy tale written in seam. Already known for a 6 for 52 against England earlier in the year,³⁵ she arrived at the tournament as a young quick with raw menace and left it as one of India’s biggest match‑winners. Her 3 for 20 against Pakistan in the group stage, sharing the new ball with Renuka, smashed the chase early and earned her a Player‑of‑the‑Match award that felt like a coming‑of‑age ceremony.

While Yastika’s job this time, was mostly to wait – pads on, gloves ready, rehearsing every scenario in her head in case anything happened to Richa, Uma showed us what the future looks like. A galaxy of stars awaits.

Harmanpreet Kaur went into this tournament as the oldest player in our XI, one day younger than me, and carrying at least ten extra years of history. She had seen 2005 from afar, 2017 from the middle, and every year since then from inside the weight room, the nets, the press conferences where she was asked about the word “chokers” without anyone quite using it. When my girl lifted the trophy, with the Bhangra and her team waiting for her, It’s difficult to explain the joy. Sometimes things can just be felt.

After the world cup, what struck me most was how lightly they wore their victory. No chest-thumping, no proclamations of dominance. Just gratitude, relief, and a deep, unmistakable sense of togetherness. Even Australia, knocked out in the semi‑final absorbed the defeat like a bruise, not a scar. And South Africa, losing the most important match of their life, were still gracious enough to accept hugs.

Women’s cricket, at its best, feels like the game stripped back to its point: the joy of being allowed to play. The records matter. The trophies matter. But they feel like by‑products of something more important: the right to take up space on a cricket field.

So when I call these women immortal, I don’t mean that highlights of Shafali’s 87 or Deepti’s 5 for 39 will live forever on some server farm in Dubai. I mean that a girl somewhere in the tiniest, dustiest, and possibly even the most gender-backward, village possible, balancing a taped tennis ball on her fingers, will one day hear these names and believe that the world will not need to be ready for her either.

📷 Reuters

Sources

How does MRF decide whose bat to sponsor?

MRF, originally Madras Rubber Factory, started as a balloon manufacturer and grew into India’s largest tyre company. Over the years, the group diversified into sporting goods, with active involvement in cricket kits, bats, gloves, and a significant marketing footprint in Indian and, to a limited extent, global sporting culture.¹ Over time their bat sponsorship has come to represent a potential enthronement, if not outright coronation of the Indian cricket’s next king. It’s fairly entertaining that MRF, once just a tyre company, now doubles as a premium sporting label—with 350+ retail outlets across India as of 2025.²

I’ve wondered about how MRF chooses, or chooses not to, sponsor someone’s bat, especially since their quick switch to sponsor Shubman Gill’s bat. And yet, the selection is not quite destiny: of the 11 players who have carried an MRF bat, 5 were asked to return it. That’s a 45% failure rate.

Also, two things: 1. The tables are pictures because I’m not mucking about with WordPress tables with this much data. It’s an absurdity. 2. I’ve done my best to check the age figures since it was relevant to this post, but I haven’t checked the cricket stats much.

The Cricketers
Sachin Tendulkar (India)
Brian Lara (WI),
Steve Waugh (Australia),
Gautam Gambhir (India)
Rohit Sharma (India)
Virat Kohli (India),
Sanju Samson (India),
Shikhar Dhawan (India),
AB de Villiers (SA),
Prithvi Shaw (India),
Mignon du Preez (SA),³
Shubman Gill (India)

The Logic
There is clearly a statistical basis for screening the candidates. Each of the cricketers finally offered the bat had a highly successful year 3 years before they got the sponsorship call. The first mottle appears two years before the sponsorship is offered, with Rohit Sharma not quite having a year to remember. One year before the sponsorship, performances from Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gambhir started fading. They were still offered sponsorships, though, so MRF was willing to bet they would pick up, and also be culturally relevant in the future.

Word on the cricketing streets is that MRF spots its talents early in their career, but the average age at the beginning of player sponsorships comes out to be 26.67, with Prithvi Shaw being the earliest pick at 17 (or 18) years old, and Steve Waugh the senior most at 36. Removing these outliers returns an average age of… 26.67 years, and removing anyone who was sponsored before 2010 makes for an average of 25.38 years.

Age of MRF bat sponsorees at the beginning and end of their tenures

It’s obvious that the original three foreign icons (Lara, Waugh, AB) were established greats when they got the MRF deal; the rest, especially Indian batters, were mostly in their 20s. Given that batters usually come into their own around 27-29 (my personal opinion), and can certainly be prodigious well into the 30s, this is consistent with MRF’s search for the next (Indian) batting legend. To be noted, all the averages tallied above fall around or before the age of 27.

These are the statistical inputs I’ve been able to spot for the champaigne:

Insatiability, 850–1,200+ runs/year in Tests or ODIs for at least one of the years before signing.
Consistent 100s in decisive or pressure games (World Cups, series deciders).
ICC event hundreds and being among top run scorers seems to be a trademark.
Youth milestones and early leadership (U19 or domestic tournament MVPs- Kohli, Dhawan, Gill, and Shaw were all U19 heroes)
Multi-format prowess, such as hundreds in all formats by 25.
Longevity (sustained form) or a steep climb in performance

The Magic
MRF’s track record of signing “the next big thing” is so consistent, it borders on magic:

They chose Tendulkar just before he ruled the 90s and 00s.
Bet on Virat as he broke records and changed Indian cricket’s mindset.
Handed Gill the baton right before a record-shattering run in 2025, including 4 consecutive Test hundreds and a string of 20→100 conversions unparalleled among peers, although this was an obvious signing with Virat retiring right before the series, and Gill now the heir apparent to the Indian No. 4 position, and the Test captain).
Timing is critical. MRF’s model aims to find the next star on the rise- locking in ambassadors just as they shift from prodigy to global icon (e.g., Sachin before he became Sachin, Kohli before captaincy explosion).

MRF therefore seems to filter for improvement arcs, multi-format ability, and brand values- not just averages. But cricketing “auras” also matter- hence Kohli, Gill (not just Indian and prodigious, but also temperamentally dignified, in possession of impressive communication skills, the worlds best ODI batter and other top performances in his age cohort, and the Indian Test captain) over otherwise comparable international stars like Dravid (diluted the Indian audience, not a superstar when compared to Sachin), Kallis (not Indian, and not as popular in India as AB), Sangakkara (see Kallis), Laxman (same as Dravid, but also confined to Tests), MS Dhoni (Not an era defining batter), KL Rahul (beautiful, inconsistent), Yashaswi Jaiswal (incredible story but not as established as Shubman, has not yet shown all format ability, although watch out for this in the future), Rishabh Pant (Likely not considered an era defining batter, but is also Spidey, and that doesn’t fit the brand image), Abhishek Sharma (maybe soon?). Ambassadors are chosen not only for statistics, but also for embodying resilience (Tendulkar’s comebacks), toughness (Kohli’s chases), artistic mastery (Lara’s flair), performance (Dhawan’s ICC tournament performances), or next-gen inspiration (Shaw, Samson, Gill). Jaiswal and Pant’s exclusions highlight that charisma alone isn’t enough- they’re watching form across formats, market potential, and personality fit. Not sponsoring MS indicates they’re not too swayed by long term captaincy or intense fandom or even the number of trophies won as skipper- once again, it’s the batting output that matters.

The Business
MRF’s approach to selecting its bat ambassadors is a nuanced blend of data-driven business strategy, brand vision, and razor-sharp market positioning, refined over decades of cricketing association. India is MRF’s largest tyre and sporting market, and cricket is India’s premier sport. MRF therefore focuses on pan-Indian cricket icons as ambassadors to maximise its cultural and commercial return on investment. This also means that non Indians rarely get the MRF sticker.

A selection of players who were not MRF bat ambassadors, and why I think that was so

By not sponsoring too many players simultaneously- and never directly competing with its own ambassadors for limelight- MRF ensures its bat sticker is always exceptional, not generic. The sustained, highly visible association with generational talents strengthens brand recall far beyond the cricket field- from tyre showrooms to street cricket bats. So concerned is MRF with its bat’s legacy, the company has divided its brand into three- the Genius bat for the artists and prodigies (Tendulkar, Kohli, AB, Gill), the Conqueror bat for those known for their grit (Steve Waugh), and the Wizard bat for Brian Lara.

MRF is always looking a generation ahead. As one ambassador (Tendulkar, Kohli) nears twilight, MRF signs the next rising phenom (Gill over Jaiswal, as the latter had not yet ticked every box), displaying continuity and reducing sponsorship risk, while ensuring ongoing cultural presence, with each transition becoming a media/ marketing event in itself. The brand’s investment is offset by massive earned media (“free” advertising) via on-field heroics, social media virality, and generational recall—no other bat sticker is as instantly recognized in world cricket.

Note: This post earlier included Sir Hadlee, but I’ve not been able to find any credible sources for it, so I’ve removed any mention of him, and redone the calculations.

Sources
1. MRF Ltd. – Fortune India
2. MRF Sports
3. @mdpminx22 on Instagram

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