Shefali Varma: The Wildcard Entry Who Weighed In For India
She wasn’t supposed to be there. But she was. And she changed the trajectory of the game
Shefali Verma wasn’t part of the squad. She wasn’t even on the reserve list. But fate, as it often does with the bold, had other plans.
When Pratika Rawal suffered a last-minute injury just days before the World Cup final, the team scrambled for a replacement. The name that surfaced wasn’t on any official sheet. Shefali was a wildcard entry. A gamble. A girl who had been watching from the sidelines, not even expecting a call-up.
And yet, by the end of the day, Shefali Verma was the name on every fan’s lips.
Grit and Guts
Thrown into the deep end, Shefali rose to the occasion. Her blistering 87-run knock, laced with seven fours and two towering sixes, turned the tide of the match.
And it wasn’t just her bat that spoke volumes. With the outcome of the game hanging in balance, captain Harmanpreet Kaur made a gut call. “She was doing something special today,” Harman said at the presentation. “And I just thought I have to go with my gut feeling. If my heart is saying I should give at least one over to her, I’m going to give it to her. I asked her, ‘can you bowl one over?' And she was so ready.”
That ‘one over’ turned into two, and two crucial wickets. That was the turning point of the final.
“When she came to the team, we told her, we might need her for two or three overs.’ And she said, ‘if you give me the bowling, I'm going to bowl 10 overs for the team,’” Harman added. “That showed how confident she was. Credit goes to her. She was so positive. Salute her, the way she was there for the team.”
Childhood caper
This isn’t the first time Shefali has defied the odds. Years ago, in Panipat, she chopped her hair and passed herself off as her brother Sahil Verma, who had fallen sick, at the Under-12 School National Championship. Not only did she help her team win, she was named player of the match.
On Sunday, Sahil was in the stands, watching his sister do it again. This time, not in disguise, but as herself, in all her glory. From a last-minute replacement to the core strength of a World Cup final, Shefali’s journey is a reminder that sometimes, the best stories aren’t written on team sheets, they’re written in the language of the courage to take up an opportunity and give it everything you’ve got.
