Felt we could win from the first ball itself: Harmanpreet Kaur

Among the many moments that caught the eye just past midnight at a frenzied DY Patil Stadium was the sight of Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana clinging to each other in the middle. The captain and her deputy, the two pillars who had carried Indian women's cricket through heartbreak after heartbreak, finally stood at the summit they'd been chasing for years.

"I've played many World Cups with her," Harmanpreet said later. "Every time we lost, we went home heartbroken and stayed quiet for a few days. When we returned, we always said, 'we have to start again from ball one'. It was heartbreaking because we played so many World Cups, reaching finals, semifinals, and sometimes not even that far. We were always thinking, when will we break this?"

That break came on a night when India's belief didn't waver one bit, not even when they lost yet another toss and were asked to bat first in a game that was delayed by two hours due to rain. "We felt we could win from the first ball itself," Harmanpreet said. "Because the way our team was playing in the last three games, a lot of things changed for us, especially our self-belief. We knew what we could do as a team. It didn't matter that we lost the toss. We knew there would be tough conditions for batting, but credit goes to Smriti and Shafali; they handled the first 10 overs very well."

The calmness and belief was hard-earned, forged through months of disappointment and quiet resolve. Even in this home World Cup which they began as second favourites, behind only Australia, they stumbled through the league phases losing three games on the bounce before picking up the slack spectacularly at the business end.

"The last month has been very interesting," Harmanpreet reflected. "It's very rare that things don't go according to your plan, and yet you stay so positive. After losing the England match, we were really heartbroken. Sir said that night, 'You can't make the same mistakes again and again. You have to cross that line.' After that day, a lot changed for us. We started visualization and meditation. Everyone took it seriously and started enjoying it. That showed we were here for something, and this time we had to do it."

The 'Sir' she referred to was Amol Muzumdar, whose calm stewardship, she said, brought stability to the dressing room. "His contribution in the last two and a half years has been amazing. Before that, coaches were changing frequently; we didn't know how to bring things forward. But after Sir came, everything became stable and smooth. He gets a lot of credit for building this team."

On the field, Deepti Sharma and Shafali Verma were the twin forces behind India's crowning night, one with her five wickets and fifty, the other with a sensational 87 and two wickets, having only been drafted into the squad before the semifinals as an injury replacement for the consistent Pratika Rawal. "I think it's all destiny, I really believe in that," Harmanpreet said. "And we didn't want Pratika to face any such thing. When she got injured, everybody was crying. Even before that, when Yastika [Bhatia] got injured during our training camp, everybody was crying because this team is very special. They pray for each other. They stay together in ups and downs.

"But when Shafali came, we didn't want her to feel that she came in under an injury cloud. Even Pratika was so positive. I think everyone took everything positively. They didn't think, 'Why is this happening to us?'"

On the big night, even as South Africa's chase of 298 threatened to turn on the back of another Laura Wolvaardt century, the message from the captain was clear. "I was just telling them, keep faith. We've worked really hard for this. Opportunities will come, and we have to grab them. ODI cricket is long, there are many phases you have to tick off again and again. When we went in, we thought we just need 10 good balls, 10 wickets, and that's exactly what happened."

As much as this was about the present, Harmanpreet was asked to jog her mind back to the women who had walked before her. "Jhulan [Goswami] Di was my biggest support," she said. "When I joined the team, she was leading it. She always supported me in my early days when I was very raw. In the initial days, Anjum [Chopra] supported me a lot. I learnt a lot from her and passed it on to my team. I'm very grateful that I got to share a special moment with them."

And for a country that has long waited for this moment, Harmanpreet knew what it meant. "We've been talking about this for many years, we've been playing good cricket, but we had to win one big tournament. Without that, we couldn't talk about change. We were waiting badly for this moment, and today we got a chance to live it.

"As soon as we got to know that our venue had been changed to DY Patil Stadium, we all got so happy because we've always played good cricket there. The biggest thing is the crowd, it's always so supportive. So, when the venue changed from Bangalore, we all started messaging in the group. We were manifesting. We said, 'the final is going to be there, we won't leave it now.' As soon as we reached Mumbai, we said, 'We've come home now, and we'll start fresh.' We didn't want to look back at previous World Cups, we left them there. The new World Cup had just started."

And now, finally, it has been won.