When the Madhya Pradesh Under-16 girls' squad was announced in 2018, there were celebrations in Chhatarpur's Sai Sports Academy followed by total confusion.

Coach Rajiv Bilthare scanned the list a few times before picking up the phone. He called people at the MPCA, seeking clarification on the "selection rumour" he'd heard - and the name he couldn't find on it: his female trainee. The authorities sent him back a copy of the squad with the name underlined a few times to make it stand out. Turns out she was on the list after all; just under her real name: Kranti Gaud - a name almost no one uses in her hometown.

To them, to her village Ghuwara and the district of Chhatarpur, she's Rohini - the girl with a big inswinger and even bigger aspirations.

She was born Kranti, not just by name but in spirit too - the youngest of six siblings in a family of modest means, rebelling against norms and traditions, and making enough waves in gully cricket sessions against boys way older in age to return home to more than just raised eyebrows from the neighbours.

Pace was always her USP. Bowling fast is the only thing Gaud knew in her tennis-ball days until a chance inclusion in a leather-ball competition finale happened. She was subbed in to a game, when she should have ideally been home studying for an exam. Player of the Match honours were bagged and bragged about, and a dream was born in a village that offered little room for such indulgence.

But Gaud had support, of her family and of Bilthare, secretary of the Chhatarpur District Cricket Association and the coach of Sagar division who would go on to become her mentor.

Bilthare's academy accounted for nearly all of the girls representing Sagar in the inter-division competitions that fed the Madhya Pradesh supply chain. Gaud's father - suspended from his police duty at the time and and financially hamstrung - travelled to Chandela for one of those tournaments and by the end of the evening had entrusted Bilthare with his 14-year-old. Gaud shifted to Chhatarpur, with even the basics provided to her by the academy free of cost and her stay arranged at his place initially and then at home of fellow pacer, Sushma Vishwakarma.

In her first few months of playing for Sagar division, they went on to finish as runners-up for the first time in history. By the time she was 15, Gaud had made the MP U-16 squad - a bus she almost missed - and impressed enough with her pace to graduate to the Under-19 team the same season. It came on the back of her batting abilities though, and the "many centuries" she had struck as a top-order batter for Sagar division. Initially picked for MPCA's off-season batting camp, and not bowling, the eventual switch came soon enough because of her unmistakable natural inswinger. However, Gaud struggled for a couple of seasons to then break into the senior side.

Shweta Mishra, the former MP Under-23 and senior coach, vividly remembers racking her brains over the 10 runs Gaud had conceded in one legal delivery in age-group cricket. The 18-year-old sure had the raw pace to rattle batters in junior cricket but accuracy wasn't necessarily her strongest suits back then. It kept her from earning a spot in the senior squad, especially with Pooja Vastrakar around to lead the attack.

"The Kranti you see now on TV is not the Kranti I met three years ago," Mishra told Cricbuzz, before delving deeper into the personal and professional evolution of the pace sensation.

"We actually first worked on her run-up. She used to do short and shuffled steps. So, we worked on gradual acceleration in her run-up so that she gets the best momentum in her run-up.

"Her loading was all good, but her release point was not. If the wrist turned to fine leg, the ball drifted excessively down the leg-side, that it evaded the keeper's full-stretch dive and raced to the boundary. The re-bowled delivery - a wayward attempt at a yorker sprayed wide outside off, once again flew past the 'keeper for another five wides. At age-group cricket, you can maybe cover up for that margin of 10-12 runs, but not so much at the senior level or against good sides."

Mishra sat down the shy, reclusive girl and the first priority was to build trust before trying to change anything in her game.

"She was't very expressive back then... the usual complexities a lot of youngsters face when they go out. So I started taking the initiative. I'd go up to her and ask if she needed to talk. I made sure that the environment is comfortable for her so she can come and talk anytime. Gradually we built that trust.

"It is not only me trusting on her, but vice versa as well. Even she had complete trust and faith in me to actually do what I was asking her to. If I was teaching her something, there was utmost trust that I will teach her the right way. That's why it was possible. If it wasn't for that trust, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't have taught her. It took some time, but then we built that trust."

Once Mishra got her to openly communicate about her bowling, they identified haywire lines as an area that needed immediate improvement. Thus began the work on Gaud's consistency.

"We gave her sessions and sessions of corridor bowling to improve her consistency. Or, we call it channel bowling."

Mishra would arrive first and prep by putting on a white and a red coloured parallel tapes all along the wicket, one at the fifth stump line and the other at mid-stump. Gaud's task was to consistently bowl in that demarcated channel only for the entire session. "We only worked on her lines; her lengths weren't so much of a problem. I knew that once she gets her lines sorted, altering lengths and trying variations is easy then."

After every five to seven such sessions, once Gaud started nailing it, Mishra would gradually narrow down the corridor - from fifth stump margin to off-stump margin next, and then just the fourth stump and off-stump channel.

"It's just an implicit way of coaching. You just have to put them into a game zone or a scenario-based practice session where they themselves have to think and do things. You just put them into the right situation.

"Then we worked on lengths - on what areas to hit. Then we brought her to a target-based scenario. I'd tell her, 'let's assume you're bowling in death overs, and these are your four fielders outside the ring, and you've to bowl a wide yorker'. We'd keep those orange cones at the popping crease, or at the lengths we wanted to her to hit basically, and she had to target them. So gradually this was built into the muscle memory with repeated sessions.

"The good thing about her is that she improved very early, and her confidence grew immensely. It started showing in her on-field game. We'd started giving her more games at Under-23 then. We were playing in Lucknow in 2023-24 winter, and it was quite soggy, there was help, and I remember asking the captain to make Kranti bowl with the new ball because the kids weren't able to handle her in those conditions. She was literally unplayable there. That gradually helped our confidence as well to then push her at the senior level. There was a lot of new-found control in her bowling, a lot of confidence in her bowling and she was hitting the right areas.

"Her kind of pace isn't commonly seen among girls in India, so I used to keep telling her that your target isn't a place in the MP side, your target should be India. That vision I kept drilling into her, and she also started seeing herself as India cricketer."

On-field numbers mirrored that improvement, and were now getting noticed. In Vastrakar's injury-forced absence in the 2024-25 season, Gaud grabbed her opportunity to lead the MP attack with the new ball and bowled them to a famous victory in the Senior Women's One-Day Trophy final, against Bengal, with a 4/25.

Her inswingers proved a menace for the in-form Bengal batters. Bowling round the wicket to left-handed opener Dhara Gujjar - the centurion from the semifinal - Gaud castled her off-stump. Sasthi Mondal, the other left-handed opener, also missed the line as the ball nipped back in sharply to knock down her leg-stump. The icing on the cake was the wicket of Richa Ghosh, who she handed a first-ball duck. Switching to over the wicket for the right-hander, Gaud had the India wicketkeeper bowled through the gate - her middle-stump pegged back, Ghosh stood there in disbelief as Bengal slipped to 16/3 in just 4.2 overs.

"That was quite a set-up. She'd obviously planned it, and then once she did it she couldn't stop talking about it. Only a skillful bowler can execute it to perfection. To get the ball to swing in sharply to both the left-handers as well as right-hander from same length - she was quite chuffed, and rightly so."

Just a fortnight before, relatively-unknown and still uncapped in T20s, Gaud had earned her first big paycheck from cricket. After serving as a net bowler for Mumbai Indians in WPL 2024, and leaving midway due to a bereavement in the family, she had only subsequently appeared for Gujarat Giants' trials. But it was UP Warriorz that signed the 21-year-old at the 2025 player auction, at her base price of INR 10 lakh. Pleasantly shocked at first, the Gauds were over the moon.

"We were in Chandigarh at the time. The girls were watching in her room. She came running to mine to break the news to me, barely able to contain her excitement. Yes, she had the potential always, but she also started performing well just at the right time, I'd say," Mishra reflected.

Bilthare, too, remembers getting an immediate call when he was still at college, but he was happier seeing the kid own the WPL stage. After two luck-less games, Gaud roared back with 4 for 25 against Delhi Capitals - Meg Lanning, Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues and Jess Jonassen her victims - a spell whose magnitude only truly sank in much later.

"It's big money, but she's very much earned it through her hard work," Bilthare told Cricbuzz. "After she returned [from WPL], she asked, 'sir, should I get a car?' In a small village like hers - she's about 80 kilometers from the nearest big city - it is difficult to arrange a cab or car-for-hire on short notice when domestic call-ups come late in the evening, and the reporting is the following couple of days. Sometimes, the flights are from Jabalpur, other times she has had to board from Khajuraho - it's a significant drive from Ghuwara."

For a breakthrough WPL season she had had, Gaud rewarded herself with a Hyundai i20 from the salary, not knowing then how handy this seemingly purchase was going to be in a month's time.

At 10 o'clock on the night of May 5, Gaud received her maiden India call-up when she was about to hit the sack. Fellow pace-bowling allrounder Kashvee Gautam, who had herself earned the India debut after impressing at WPL 2025, sustained an injury in Colombo during the ODI tri-series, unexpectedly paving the way for a dream Gaud could hardly have imagined coming true so soon.

Mayank, her brother, then drove her down for an early morning flight from Bhopal. It was a wicket-less first outing in India colours for Gaud in Colombo but she was soon to be on the that flight for the white-ball tour England, in June-July, with lingering doubts over the availability of Renuka Thakur, Vastrakar and Gautam.

Not that she had quiet first couple of ODIs, but it was the record-equalling 6/52 in Chester-le-Street that firmly put Gaud on the selectors' radar for the World Cup irrespective of the rehab status of the injured trio. All six of her wickets in that spell came on the deliveries where she got some seam movement. The key however was the control, aided by the fact that all but two balls of her 9.5 over spell were against right-handers. Over half of those were in the channel outside off, for which she returned 2/17 in 29 balls at an economy of 3.51. The other four wickets came to balls which were either within the stumps line or wide outside off.

Nine of her 20 ODI wickets to date have been bowled or LBW, all with inswing. With those straighter lines she's relentlessly worked on, session after session behind the scenes, any kind of seam movement aids her, making it difficult for batters to line her up.

Back in Colombo in five months, this time for the World Cup in October, Gaud backed her planning and homework with strong instincts, setting the stage for India's comfortable win in a high-stakes game against Pakistan.

Gaud's rise in just nine months has been nothing short of remarkable - from playing a pivotal role in MP's title-winning run to a memorable WPL stint, donning the Indian jersey and now representing the country in a home World Cup. Behind her swift ascent was not just exceptional talent and the unyielding hard work, but also the fierce will the defy the odds and turn adversity into ambition.

"Some people dwell in that and they never grow. But some people take that as a challenge, and Kranti is one. She wanted to grow, she wanted to see herself doing well. That's why I use the word 'brave' for her." Mishra said.

"She used to initially isolate herself and think too low of herself because, maybe, she came from a humble background. Now seeing that Kranti - who had a very low self-esteem when I first met her - transform this way in her self-belief, going and doing wonders in WPL, in England, in World Cup, backing herself is nothing short of a scene straight out of a movie. She's made the best of the every opportunity she got."

Somewhere along the line, the chants of the crowds replaced the whispers of the naysayers. Gaud returned home from England to a generous gift from local government - a two-acre plot to build her family a home. And the same Ghuwara village that once questioned her choices now gathered around a glowing LED projector to watch her World Cup debut - to celebrate not the rebel (Kranti) they once knew, but the star (Rohini) she's gone on to become all inside a whirlwind year of top-flight cricket.