When history was made
with the last ball of the 25th over, and that doubles the responsibility on Harman.
Mithali’s only advice to her vice captain is that old cricketing cliché: Play the ball according to its merits. Harman waits. The first three balls of the 27th over, bowled by Kristen, are unremarkable. Harman is on 41 off 60 balls. Then comes the trigger that she has been waiting for. Kristen loses control, the ball slips out of her hand, and sails above the batter’s head. Ahsan Raza and Shaun George, the two on-field umpires, call it a no-ball and hold a miniconference in the middle. A free hit is awarded. The rules were changed only two years ago.
Before that, a free hit (a batter can only be run out off this delivery) was awarded to the batting team only if the no-ball was because of the bowler overstepping the crease. It is India’s luck that Harman has not taken a single and is on strike. Had that happened, Deepti Sharma, her batting partner, whose style is more about grafting than attacking, would have taken the free hit.
As it happens, Harman is using opener Smriti Mandhana’s bat. It is a brand new willow. Batters are often fussy and superstitious about their bat, but here is one of India’s premier cricketers bringing out an untested willow for one of the biggest matches of her career.
In a sport that is only recently seeing big and consistent six-hitting, Harman is one of the big hitters. All through this tournament, though, she has struck only two sixes—both slog sweeps over midwicket, one on the opening day against England and one in the league game against Australia. The free hit against the leg-spinner is now a chance to see if she can hit a six with the new bat.
Sitting in the press box, suddenly, there is anticipation in the air. On the radio, Charlotte Edwards, the former England captain and the batter with the most ODI runs until Mithali surpassed her recently, has been talking about that “feeling” she gets. That moment when the game is poised. When something is going to happen.
Right on cue, Harman steps out and dispatches Kristen over long-on.
There is a roar from the 1800- odd spectators at the ground. Soon, millions watching on television from around the world will join in.
Everything about that shot against the tournament’s third highest wicket-taker is right technically. You can also see that Harman’s ev- ery sinew has been spent in owning that moment. This is the moment when Australia, the defending champions, who have beaten India in seven of their last eight meetings, get pushed to a corner. The shift in momentum is as clear as the disappearing grey skies.
Harman was on 41 off 60 balls before that no-ball. By the end of the innings, she would be 171 not out off 115 balls, with twenty fours and seven sixes.
And nobody would dare say that women’s cricket was boring. Beamed live on primetime television in India, it was the greatest advertisement for the sport—and the greatest validation of its potential. Cricketers, even the men, are applauding. Social media amplifies every encouraging word. Marketers everywhere are revising their strategies. Girls and boys in living rooms back home greet the arrival of a new hero.
This most remarkable of sporting performances was orchestrated in the most un- remarkable of cities. Derby, a two-hour train ride north of London, is a beautiful city, with heritage buildings and neatly laid-out parks. But, as an industrial town—it was a centre of the Industrial Revolution—it holds few distractions for the casual tourist. The mood on rainy days can be especially gloomy. A taxi driver told us that he once drove Virat Kohli from Derby to London, and there is a picture of Mohammad Azharuddin outside the cricket club office. The former Indian captain was prolific for Derbyshire in the English county games from 1991 to 1994, and the photograph has him in coloured clothing playing his favourite flick shot. But apart from this, there is very little cricket connect for Indians. Indian women played and won their first Twenty20 international at the Derbyshire County Cricket Ground, located north of the city, but there was such little coverage of that 2006 match that very few remember it.
Harmanpreet Kaur, of course, has now changed India’s relationship with the city forever. Now, no narrative about women’s cricket is complete without an account of that day in Derby when “Harry” stole the thunder with a scarcely believable innings against the best. Extracted with permission from ‘The Fire Burns Blue: A History Of Women’s Cricket In India’, by Karunya Keshav and Sidhanta Patnaik, published by Westland Books