Two dreams, one trophy: Pratika’s agony, Shafali’s pride

It began as agony for one and became pride for another, a cruel twist of fate that only sport can script. The story of Pratika Rawal and Shafali Verma is not just about selection and replacement, but about heartbreak and redemption, loss and light, that fragile thread between despair and destiny. In the end, joy conquered everything, as India lifted the Women’s World Cup for the first time.

When India’s squad for the 2025 Women’s ODI World Cup was announced on August 19, Shafali Verma’s name was missing. For a girl who once carried a nation’s hopes at just fifteen, the silence that followed hit harder than any bouncer ever could. She smiled for the cameras, nodded through the questions, but inside, she was breaking. The cheers that once echoed her name had faded into whispers — what went wrong?

Then, months later, the phone rang. Pratika Rawal, the promising all-rounder who had taken her place — had suffered a cruel ankle injury on the eve of the knockouts. While training quietly for a domestic match in Gujarat, Shafali got the call that changed everything. The dream she thought she had lost was calling her back. “Are you sure?” she had asked, barely believing her ears. But the moment she wore the India jersey again, something inside her shifted. The hurt, the doubt, the silence — all of it turned to fire.

From her first blistering stroke in the semifinal to the final wicket in the championship clash, Shafali’s story lit up the tournament. She played as if she had been waiting her whole life for this one chance, fearless, unshakable, beautifully brutal.

“I thank Harmanpreet Kaur and coach Amol Muzumdar for trusting me with the opening again,” she said later, eyes glistening beneath the floodlights. “This wasn’t just a comeback, it was my answer.”

For her father, Sanjeev Verma, the moment carried a lifetime of memories — of dawn practices, dusty grounds, and a little girl he once disguised as a boy so she could play cricket in Rohtak, where dreams like hers weren’t meant for girls. “I told her, your time will come,” he said softly. “Just be ready. And when that call came, just after Diwali — it felt like God himself had sent us a blessing.”

And she made it count. In the semifinal, her 87 runs carved through South Africa’s attack like sunlight through storm clouds. Two wickets later, she had flipped the match — and India’s destiny — on its head. At 21, Shafali Verma has already lived a lifetime in cricket, the youngest to debut for India, the youngest to reach 1,000 T20I runs, the youngest to play across all formats. Yet none of those records meant as much as this comeback.

For Pratika, it was heartbreak, her World Cup ending in tears of joy and bandages, but her spirit soaring as she joined the celebrations. For Shafali, it was rebirth — the agony of rejection transformed into the pride of redemption.

That night, as India lifted the trophy, Shafali looked up at the sky, bat still in hand. She was no longer just the daughter of Rohtak, she was the daughter of a billion hearts, the girl who turned pain into power and silence into song.