Shafali Verma Shares How Her Father Took On Critics as She Rose to Become a World Champion at 21

Eight out of our 11 World Cup champions were born after 1997. I kept coming back to that number because it changes how we understand this team. These are women who grew up in a different India, an India that often labels their entire generation as distracted or unsure. Yet here they are, holding a trophy most athletes spend a lifetime chasing.

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And then there is Shafali, just 21.

While most people her age are still debating college courses, scrolling through career options, or choosing what to post on Instagram, she has already lived a whole arc of pressure, expectation, success, and self-doubt.

I noticed something real in that Vogue photo

A few days ago, I paused on a photo of her from a Vogue shoot. Everything about the frame was styled and prepared, the way magazine portraits usually are. But something stood out. Even with all the staging around her, she looked like herself. No borrowed confidence; just presence.

It made me look at her story differently. Here is a young woman moving through spaces that are polished and glossy without letting any of it rearrange who she is. In that, she is reshaping what a sports icon can look like for young girls today.

That image stayed with me as I read through her milestones. It made her story feel even more striking — a young athlete who can hold both things at once: the spotlight and her sense of self.

She answers questions the same way she lives her life

When Shafali is asked what she would tell her younger self, or what she wants young girls to take from her journey, her answers do not sound rehearsed. They arrive exactly as she feels them.

There is a steadiness in the way she speaks, the kind that forms when someone has lived a lot in a short time and is still learning how to carry it.

“When I first picked up a bat, I think I was around nine or 10 years old,” she tells The Better India.

You can picture that girl in Rohtak, rushing through homework so she could run to the lane where the boys played, gripping a bat that felt too big but absolutely right.

“Today, when I look at myself, I am so happy that I chose cricket.”

She says it without emphasis, like someone still processing the size of her own story.

Her father was the only one who said ‘yes’

In Rohtak, strength sports dominate the landscape. Girls playing cricket was not a common idea, let alone an accepted one. Many dreams in such places start with limits instead of support.

“In Haryana, kabaddi and wrestling are always given more importance. Cricket is very rare, and women’s cricket even more so,” she says.

Her story begins with one person who did not accept that limitation.

“At that time, it was only my father who believed in me. It was my father’s belief, so thanks to him for believing in me so much.”

He took on the criticism. He absorbed the comments meant for her.

“People in our neighbourhood used to say, ‘Why are you sending a girl? Women’s cricket does not even exist.’ But my father never let those comments reach me,” she says. “He always told them, ‘It will be good. Women’s cricket is alive, and it will grow even more.’”

Sometimes a girl’s life changes because one adult refuses to give up on her.

There was a point when she thought cricket was over for her

Shafali speaks about her achievements with restraint. But when she talks about the difficult parts, her tone shifts into something deeper, something lived.

When asked, what’s one warning you’d give — something you did wrong back then that you wouldn’t want to repeat?

“Back then, I didn’t pay attention to studies at all. I only focused on cricket. So I’d warn my younger self that maybe if I had studied a bit more, I would have been mentally stronger. When you study as a kid, it makes you mentally stronger later. So I think if I had done that a little more, I would be mentally even stronger today.”

There is no defensiveness in the way she says it; just honesty.

When talking about a moment when she almost gave up, she honestly tells The Better India, “This happened very recently, in 2025, when my name did not come up for the T20 team and not for the ODI team either. I almost gave up.”

“My brother told me, ‘It is okay, times change. These things happen in everyone’s life.’ My whole family supported me. That was a very, very difficult period for me.”

You can imagine her during those months, checking lists, scrolling through reactions, and replaying moments in her mind; wondering if what she had built was slipping away. But she stayed. She kept trying.

We often imagine ambition as loud, fiery, and dramatic. Shafali offers another version, one that is steadier and more rooted in routine.

She does the work. She keeps to her training. She gets back up after bad days. And she does not make a noise about it.

Her generation lives both online and offline at the same time. They are judged quickly and understood slowly. And yet they show up.

On the field, she plays with full force. Off the field, she second-guesses herself and talks about her life the way any 21-year-old might.

The person behind the cricketer

When Shafali is asked how she hopes people will remember her, she does not talk about runs or records.

“Apart from cricket, I really want to be a good human being. Because you play cricket only for a certain period, after that, people know you for your humanity. So after cricket, I want people to know that I am a good human being and I’m working on that every day.”

She tells us about her dog, the children she loves spending time with, and the calm she finds in nature.

After the World Cup win, her message was simple. “After this win, I want to thank both those who supported us and those who did not. The ones who did not support us pushed us to work even harder.”

Her journey reflects something true about her generation. They did not wait for the perfect system. They worked with whatever they had.

She stayed with cricket even when it did not stay with her

Shafali Verma’s rise is not a dramatic story. It is a consistent one. It is built on showing up on days when motivation is low, on holding a heavy bat as a child, on returning to nets after rejections, and on choosing not to quit even when it felt easier.

“Hard work always pays off, and I am seeing that result now. And I have to continue working hard; it’s not something that can stop. That’s what being a sportsperson is — continuous practice and continuous hard work,” she says.

And in her case, those words are not a slogan. They are a record of how she has lived every year of her young career.

All pictures courtesy Shafali Verma