This had been India’s World Cup all along. As hosts. As the emerging global powerhouse of women’s cricket. As the team that has pushed the sport’s hegemonic force harder than any other, defeating it twice in semi-finals. As the team whose time had been too long in coming.On Sunday, India made it their World Cup by winning it. Shafali Verma capped an extraordinary week with an extraordinary display in the final: 87 off 78 balls to set up a total of 298 for 7, and two unexpected wickets of characteristic cheek at a crucial juncture in a chase that threatened more than once to turn into a nailbiter. Deepti Sharma, a world-class offspinner who has raised her batting to a new level this year, backed up a run-a-ball half-century with a five-wicket haul that combined old-school overspin with new-age defensive skills. India won by 52 runs, and that margin disguised how much tension this final contained.This was a meeting of two teams nursing histories of heartbreak, and one had to lose. That fate was South Africa’s, cruelly for their captain Laura Wolvaardt, the tournament’s highest run-getter, who followed a career-defining semi-final century with an innings just as good. This was anyone’s game as long as she was in, given South Africa’s immense depth, until she was seventh out for 101 off 98 balls, miscuing Deepti high into the Navi Mumbai night.Nadine de Klerk, the match-winner in the league-stage meeting between these teams, kept faint hopes alive with her hitting, but 78 to get with only Nos. 10 and 11 for company was too much of an ask even for her.Laura Wolvaardt finished 571 tournament runs, new World Cup record•ICC/Getty Images
South Africa won what looked to be an important toss, but the dew that Navi Mumbai has always brought to run-chases didn’t quite materialise, possibly because the showers that pushed the match back by two hours brought temperatures down well before night fell.This equalised conditions for both teams, and India, in the end, had personnel better suited to a pitch where the ball stopped and gripped: more in-form batters adept at risk-free manipulation of spin, and spinners who posed a greater attacking threat. As long as dew didn’t complicate Deepti and Shree Charani’s job, South Africa were going to find it difficult to chase 299 on this pitch.Related
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The chase put India’s innings in perspective. Their total was the second-highest ever achieved in a Women’s World Cup final, but given the events of Thursday’s semi-final on the same ground, and given South Africa’s depth, it looked less than intimidating.And recent events were fresh in the mind. India had been 200 for 3 after 35 overs. They only scored 98 in their last 15 overs, and only 69 in their last 10.But the key passages may have come earlier.When the skies cleared and the match began, Shafali and Smriti Mandhana got off to start as ominous as Australia’s on Thursday; 58 for no loss in eight overs. Ayabonga Khaka struggled to control the sometimes extravagant swing she found, and Marizanne Kapp didn’t find much at all with her new ball. Both erred frequently.Shafali Verma made her highest ODI score in the World Cup final•AFP/Getty Images
Shafali, stepping out to the seamers whenever she could, drove and flicked her way to five fours in her first 19 balls, and Mandhana, less overtly aggressive, had unfurled her two favourite shots, the back-cut and the cover drive, against Khaka in a 14-run sixth over.But South Africa pulled things back courtesy de Klerk’s straighter lines and left-arm spinner Nonkululeko Mlaba’s pace variations, with India only scoring 13 runs in the five overs from the ninth to the 13th.The boundaries began to flow again thereafter, though, with Shafali launching de Klerk down the ground for the first six of the innings in the 15th over, but just when India seemed to be pulling away from South Africa’s reach, Mandhana was out edging a late-cut to the keeper, bringing a 104-run opening stand to an end.This pull-push continued all the way through the innings, in conditions where neither the bowlers nor batters could quite get on top. A tiring, cramping Shafali fell after adding 16 runs to her previous ODI best of 71*, holing out while looking to hit straight and big. Jemimah Rodrigues, Harmanpreet and Amanjot Kaur all got off to starts but couldn’t convert, two of them falling to balls that seemed to stop on the pitch.India’s lack of a big finish owed a lot to how well South Africa exploited this tendency of the pitch, with Khaka making up for her expensive new-ball spell (3-0-29-0) by conceding just 29 runs in her last seven overs while picking up the key wickets of Shafali, Rodrigues and Richa Ghosh.Ayabonga Khaka picked up three big wickets•Getty Images
Ghosh walked in at 245 for 5 in the 44th over and launched her second ball for an effortless six over the covers. She remained the only India batter to defy the conditions and hit the old ball cleanly through the line, pouncing on South Africa’s shift in strategy from stump-to-stump cutters to yorker attempts that came with a smaller margin for error.Khaka’s dismissal of Ghosh in the 49th over, however, seemed to even up the contest once more. Right through that over, Khaka kept cramping Ghosh with pinpoint yorkers that followed her attempts to manufacture room, before a last-ball flick ended up in deep backward square leg’s hands.De Klerk followed up with a final over in which Deepti and new batter Radha Yadav were only able to take singles, and India had ended up two short of 300.Deepti had been a busy presence through the last 20 overs of the innings, slog-sweeping with authority when she could, and keeping the strike turning over when she couldn’t. She didn’t quite find the next gear, however, to lift India to the 320-plus total they had seemed set for for so long.The magnitude of India’s 298, however, began looking clear from the time they began defending it. Their seamers didn’t make the line and length errors that South Africa’s did with the new ball, with Renuka Singh causing problems in particular with her booming inswing. She unsuccessfully reviewed a not-out lbw appeal against Tazmin Brits early on, and then nearly had her spoon one to a cleverly positioned short mid-on.DY Patil Stadium was a sea of blue on Sunday•ICC/Getty Images
But it took a brilliant bit of fielding for India to get their breakthrough, with Amanjot pouncing to her wrong side from midwicket and throwing down the stumps at the bowler’s end to find Brits short while attempting a quick single.Two overs later, South Africa were two down, as Anneke Bosch ended a miserable tournament with a six-ball duck, misreading Charani’s length and getting trapped right in front while playing back to a ball of fullish length.Wolvaardt, though, was already on 35 off 30, and already looking ominous, having broken free of early pressure with a series of leg-side swats and a clean, straight six off Deepti. Just when she needed a partner to stay in with her, she found one in Sune Luus, whose trademark mix of square and fine sweeps quickly began putting India back under pressure.But just when the third-wicket stand had crossed the half-century mark, India found their golden arm. Shafali, who had taken just the one wicket with her part-time offspin in 30 previous ODIs, sauntered to the crease and prised out Luus with her second ball, delivering something like a slow legcutter or a carrom ball without the finger flick. Expecting turn in one direction and finding it in another, Luus closed her bat face and popped back a return catch. Kept on for another over, she struck again with her first ball, this time turning an offbreak big to have Kapp strangled down the leg side.Deepti Sharma was named Player of the Tournament•ICC/Getty Images
With parts of Mumbai experiencing rain at that moment, South Africa had been ahead of the DLS par score before Luus’ dismissal. At 123 for 4 in the 23rd over, they were well behind it.And they slipped further behind when Sinalo Jafta, batting ahead of more proven, more powerful names despite an ODI average in the mid-teens, began to dot up against the spinners. By the time she spooned Deepti to midwicket, she had scored 16 off 29 and 25 off 44 with Wolvaardt.But even with 151 required from 123 balls, this match wasn’t done. Annerie Dercksen silenced a packed stadium with back-to-back sixes off Radha, the first off a high full-toss no-balled for height. Wolvaardt ended Shafali’s spell – perhaps ambitiously stretched into a seventh over – with a pair of fours drilled through the covers and down the ground.With 11 overs to go, South Africa needed 92.But they still had the tournament’s highest wicket-taker, and an end-overs ace, to contend with. Deepti, in the second over of a new spell, produced a quick yorker out of nowhere that Dercksen couldn’t put bat to. And then, in her next over, she slowed one down, inviting Wolvaardt to go big. Dip produced the mishit, but it still needed to be taken, and Amanjot, walking in from deep midwicket, did on the third – or was it the fourth? – attempt, falling to the floor but somehow holding on.Three balls later, Deepti’s white-ball smarts put India another massive step closer, a quicker, cross-seam ball beating Tryon to rap her front pad; given out on the field, DRS upheld it on umpire’s call.There was still work to do, and still nerves to get past, but the World Cup, so elusive for so many years, was beginning to loom into India’s view.