When India captain Harmanpreet Kaur latched on to a catch to clinch the Women's Cricket World Cup final against South Africa it ended a decades-long wait for her and the country to finally lift the trophy.
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It may also have changed the face of women's cricket, finally providing an enduring challenge to Australian supremacy.
India has long been a global power in the men's game but had to wait until now to finally become world champion on the women's side.
And it wasn't for a lack of trying.
India made their World Cup debut as host in 1978, then made the final in 2005 and 2017 — losing to Australia on the first occasion and England on the second.
Kaur was on the team in 2017, and scored a scintillating 171 not out against Australia earlier in the tournament — an innings that made the cricket world take notice of the Indian women's team.
The loss to England by a mere nine runs in the final that year fuelled an increased desire in the country to take that final step.
"Every time we lost, we went home heartbroken and stayed quiet for a few days," Kaur said after Sunday's win.
"When we returned, we 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?"
Now the new question is: where does it go from here?
"The women's game was already rising in India," said Nasser Hussain, the former captain of England's men's team who is now a commentator. "They needed this title to put a seal on it and this should take the game to the stratosphere here."
The triumph comes after an concerted effort in India to get over the hump.
At the last World Cup in 2022, India failed to even make it out of the group stage, a debacle that rankled officials at home and led to increased urgency to boost the women's game.
The Women's Premier League — an idea that had long seemed a pipe dream — was launched the next year. Three seasons later, several top names who emerged from the T20 league were key to India's victory. Medium pacer Kranti Goud (nine wickets in eight matches) and left-arm spinner Shree Charani (14 wickets in nine matches) both made their international debuts earlier in 2025.
Sachin Tendulkar, the legendary India batsman who is regarded as one of the greatest cricketers ever, compared the elation from Sunday's win to that in 1983 when India won the men's World Cup for the first time.
"1983 inspired an entire generation to dream big and chase those dreams," Tendulkar wrote on X. "Today, our women's cricket team has done something truly special. They have inspired countless young girls across the country to pick up a bat and ball, take the field and believe that they too can lift that trophy one day."
Australia, so long the dominant force in women's cricket, now have a rival who, unlike previous World Cup winners in the last 15 years at 50-over (England, 2017) and T20 (West Indies, 2016 and New Zealand, 2024) look set to sustain their challenge.
Australian Associated Press
