India's squad for ICC Women's Cricket World Cup 2025: Shafali Verma misses out; Renuka Singh to spearhead pace attack

In a major development, India have left out dashing opener Shafali Verma from their 15-member squad for the ICC Women's Cricket World Cup 2025, which was announced on Tuesday in Mumbai. Harmanpreet Kaur has been named as the captain of the side while Smriti Mandhana will be her deputy. It will also be Harmanpreet's maiden ODI World Cup as Indian women's team captain.

Pratika Rawal and Harleen Deol have been rewarded for their consistent performances while the bowling attack will be spearheaded by Renuka Singh Thakur. The selectors have also picked a couple of new faces in Kranti Gaud and Sree Charani, who impressed in recent series in England.

Renuka, who was sidelined with a foot injury post Women's Premier League, missed the tri-series in Sri Lanka, and hasn't played for the national team since. She will be making her ODI comeback against Australia in September. Meanwhile, pace-bowling all-rounder Amanjot Kaur has been rested against Australia but named in the World Cup squad.

Yastika Bhatia, who missed the World Cup bus has also been named in the squad for Australia series, which is a preparation before the global event, starting at home from September 30.

India are slated to play Australia in a three-match ODI series with the first two games to be played in Mullanpur in New Chandigarh on September 14 and 17 respectively. Delhi will host the final game on September 20. India will begin Women's World Cup campaign on September 30.

Why was Shafali Verma ignored? The right-hander hasn't been in Indian national team's radar for quite some time now. After being left out of the Australian tour last year and the home series against West Indies, the dashing opener was ignored for the Ireland series as well, followed by the recent England tour which India won. Although she scored a a fifty and a 30-plus score for India A against Australia A recently, that wasn't enough to impress the selectors.

Shafali did finish the Senior Women’s One-Day Trophy as the leading run scorer with 527 runs at an average of 75.29 and a strike-rate of 152.31, including two centuries and two fifties, but that couldn't stake her claim in the senior squad. Earlier, Harmanpreet stated that Shafali needed to be ‘in the zone’ to make her way back into the senior setup.

Indian women squad for ICC World Cup 2025 Harmanpreet Kaur (Capt), Smriti Mandhana (VC), Pratika Rawal, Harleen Deol, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Renuka Singh Thakur, Arundhati Reddy, Richa Ghosh (WK), Kranti Gaud, Amanjot Kaur, Radha Yadav, Sree Charani, Yastika Bhatia (WK) and Sneh Rana; Standby: Tejal Hasabnis , Prema Rawal, Priya Mishra , Uma Chetry, Mnnu Mani, Sayali Satghare

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