Year 2017. Ground Derby. 115 balls and 171 not out runs.
Australia stood as a wall between the World Cup final and India. But Harmanpreet Kaur refused to see that wall.
The ball kept crossing the boundary line again and again and the country which had till now received very limited attention for women's cricket, suddenly started looking up.
Even though the Indian team lost in the final, a new beginning had already been made.
If women's cricket is getting seriousness, popularity and audience in world cricket today, then Harmanpreet Kaur's picture will definitely be on the poster of this success.
Harmanpreet is named along with Jhulan Goswami and Mithali Raj among the most influential figures of Indian women's cricket of the 21st century.
After nine years, on 6 October 2026, Harmanpreet Kaur left the captaincy of all three formats of cricket and said just a few words – I have fulfilled my duty.
There was no bitterness in those words. There was only peace.
Harmanpreet was born on 8 March 1989 in Moga, Punjab. In a town which was not known for producing cricket stars.
She grew up in an ordinary Sikh family. There was no girls' team, no academy, and the neighborhood had full opportunity to express its opinion on a girl playing on the field.
His father Harmandar Singh Bhullar was a clerk in the district court and himself had a deep connection with sports.
He had played volleyball, basketball and club cricket. He kept hearing the taunts and ignored them. The daughter continued playing street cricket with the boys, sometimes with a hockey stick when a bat was not available, and the ball still went where she wanted it to go.
Then one day Kamaldish Singh Sodhi's eyes fell on him. A cricket-loving school principal, who often used to come for a walk in the same ground.
He helped from his own pocket, convinced her parents to let their daughter play and got her admitted to the cricket academy of Gyan Jyoti School.
His son Yadvinder became his first coach. The silent faith of a father and the trust of a coach, these were the first two bricks of the building that stood later.
At the age of 20, he entered international cricket for India in the 2009 World Cup against Pakistan.
At that time she was a medium fast bowling all-rounder, who later became an off-break bowler. She used to swing the bat like her idol Virender Sehwag.
Three years later, in 2012, he got the chance to captain India for the first time. He led India to the T20 Asia Cup title by defeating Pakistan in Guangzhou and then also won both the white-ball series against Bangladesh on home soil.
In the 2013 World Cup, she also scored a century in the defeat against England and the opposing captain Charlotte Edwards openly praised this innings.
That innings had shown that this name is worth remembering. In 2016, he got the responsibility of India's regular T-20 captain.
In the same year, during the Australia tour, he chased India's highest successful T20 target at that time. The reward for this was the Big Bash contract with Sydney Thunder, which was the first for any Indian cricketer.
In June the following year, she became the first Indian to join Surrey Stars in England's Kia Super League.
And then came that inning of 171 not out.
That innings took India to the World Cup final for the first time since 2005 and made a girl from Moga the story of the entire country.
A few weeks later, the then President Ram Nath Kovind gave him the Arjuna Award at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
His captaincy was outspoken, fearless and was transformative.
More than just tactics and team-sheets, he changed how India viewed itself.
She was always fearlessly aggressive in batting and captaincy and strategic understanding added maturity to that aggression with time.
After Mithali Raj's retirement in 2022, she also took over the reins of the ODI team.
In the same year, India won the Asia Cup under his leadership. Under his leadership in 2023, India won the gold medal in the Hangzhou Asian Games.
In the same year, she made Mumbai Indians the first Women's Premier League champion.
Mumbai won two titles in the first three seasons and in the 2025 victory, Harmanpreet did what is expected of a captain. Both the opening batsmen of Mumbai had returned within five overs, when they snatched the match from Delhi Capitals by scoring 66 runs in 44 balls.
December 2023 was perhaps his most memorable week in the white jersey. In her first match as Test captain, she scored 49 and 44 not out in Navi Mumbai as India defeated England by 347 runs, the biggest win in women's Test history.
A few days later, in Mumbai, she became the first captain of India to lead a Test win against the Australian team, which is one of the most successful teams in women's cricket.
Australia captain Alyssa Healy had then said that Harmanpreet has brought a new generation of Indian women into the field of modern cricket.
But the most important moment of his journey came in 2025 and then Australia was in front of him.
Like that innings of 2017, this time too she was standing in the middle of the biggest moment of Indian women's cricket.
In the World Cup semi-finals, she scored 89 runs and made a partnership of 167 runs with Jemimah Rodrigues.
This partnership took India to the final with a record successful run-chase.
A few days later, India won its first World Cup at home by defeating South Africa and the trophy was in the hands of Harmanpreet.
Along with the success on the field, many big personal honors were also added to Harmanpreet's account.
In 2023, she became the first female cricketer from India to be selected as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year.
In the same year, she also got a place in TIME100 Next and was also included in the prestigious list of BBC's 100 Influential Women.
Received the honor of Padmashree in May 2026.
She had said that she used to dream of World Cup, Arjuna Award and Padmashree. Now all three were in his name.
The summer of 2026 turned out to be difficult. India was eliminated from the group stage of the T20 World Cup in England and the team arrived for the one-off Test at Lord's in July with low morale.
It was the first women's Test played at that ground, after 150 men's Tests, and Harmanpreet knew how long the wait had taken.
On the eve of the match he said, "Maybe it's late, but not too late."
He scored 58 runs on 121 balls and crossed the figure of 9,000 international runs in the same innings.
After Mithali Raj and Smriti Mandhana, she became only the third Indian woman to reach this milestone.
India won that match by 270 runs.
In Dubai in September, she became the first player, whether men's or women's, to captain a national team in 150 international T20 matches.
Eight days later, India won the Asia Cup for a record eighth time by defeating Sri Lanka by 72 runs.
And 23 days later he wrote that letter.
At the time of leaving the captaincy, he had 9,191 international runs, eight centuries and 44 half-centuries in his account.
Another Harmanpreet is also recorded in the scorecard and that is bowler Harmanpreet.
He has taken 75 international wickets so far. These include the nine wickets he took in his second Test in Mysore in November 2014, when he led India to an innings victory against South Africa.
He said this comfort came from the belief that his team had "talent, character, belief and a future".
At the age of 37, she is not retiring.
She is just unloading the load. The responsibility of choosing the playing eleven, the scrutiny of eyes and the burden of a billion expectations.
What remains is what the girl from Moga had initially wanted – a bat, a jersey and an open field.
"Captaincy ends, but the journey continues."
