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Updated: November 19, 2025 11:37 PM IST
Jhulan Goswami reflects on the team’s journey and their promise to win the World Cup.
The Indian women’s cricket team won its first World Cup earlier this month. Vice captain Smriti Mandhana was quoted as saying, “During the last World Cup, we spoke to Jhulan (Goswami) didi, that I want to win that World Cup for her – we couldn’t do that, then we said, the night before the Lord’s match from which she retired – we will win it for her, so this is for Jhulan didi.” After the win, the team feted the crowd, where they met Jhulan, Mithali Raj and Anjum Chopra and included all three legends in their celebration, with all three being given the chance to hold the trophy by the victorious team.
Remind them about it and Jhulan tells us, “The girls made every Indian feel that we were part of the winning moment, it was a proud and exciting moment. I have shared the dressing room with them, we have seen ups and downs together. Not just Smriti, even Jemimah (Rodrigues), Harman (Harmanpreet Kaur) and others, I have a special bond with all of them. We came close to winning the World Cup twice in the past But this time he made victory a reality. A promise he kept.”
She recalls that when she started playing cricket, even her family could not understand why she would take up cricket as her profession. She says, “I used to play cricket in the backyard with my cousins and I fell in love with the game. There was no social media or fan following for women’s cricket then. We used to get live coverage of our matches only once a year. Coming from a village near Kolkata, I used to travel by local train and I remember people asking stupid questions to make fun of me like ‘Do women play underarm cricket?’ When I When I started, even my family could not understand my passion for the game. But what motivated me to move forward was the name of the country on my jersey. Things changed after BCCI took over.”
Jhulan’s biopic ‘Chakda Express’ starring Anushka Sharma is also in the news. Filming began around June 2022 and reportedly completed in December 2022. The project was initially scheduled to release on a streaming platform, but was reportedly delayed due to rights and distribution disputes between the producers and the OTT platform. After the Indian women’s cricket team’s historic win, recent reports say that the makers of Chakda Express have written a letter to the top executives of the streaming platform, urging them to release their film. But Jhulan rejected this news and said. “I am not aware of any such update. Let’s hope for the best.”
The cricket legend recently met Salman Khan on his reality show, where he congratulated all the women who have contributed to the team’s success. “It was really good to see that coming from them. All the hard work put in by our seniors as well as the current team is now paying off.”
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