Harmanpreet Kaur Steps Down As India Captain, Wants To Continue Playing

Harmanpreet Kaur | The game changer

Harmanpreet Kaur has announced that she is stepping down as captain of India, while making clear that she wants to continue playing for the country.

She made the announcement through an Instagram post featuring a photograph taken at Lord’s, where she is seen looking towards the famous balcony at cricket’s best-known venue.

The image shows Harmanpreet dressed in a dark blue blazer and white trousers, with her hair gathered in a tight ponytail and her hands clasped behind her back.

The camera captured her from behind as she stood at the venue in northwest London, in what seems to have been a photoshoot in July ahead of the historic Women’s Test between India and England.

It was the first-ever women’s Test at Lord’s, a ground whose history dates back 239 years.

Harmanpreet chose that image for the post in which she announced her decision to step down as India captain.

Her fairly long and well-written message was posted on Tuesday (October 6, 2026).

The post has received 1.4 million views and about 30,500 comments, with the photograph reaching an audience that was not necessarily made up entirely of long-time followers of women’s cricket.

The innings that changed the conversation

It is not even a decade since female practitioners of India’s favourite obsession began to be known beyond their families and friends, apart from a small circle of committed supporters.

Harmanpreet was the player who forced the Indian cricket fan to take a closer look at the women’s game.

In the semifinal of the 2017 World Cup at Derby, she played an innings that still remains perhaps the greatest played by a woman.

Her 171 not out off just 115 balls stunned defending champions Australia.

The performance was not merely a high-scoring innings; it also changed the attention being given to women’s cricket in India.

Former Australian captain Alyssa Healy said the innings even forced her team to change the way it played its cricket.

Harmanpreet’s own hero, Virender Sehwag, called it an innings of a lifetime and tweeted, “Harmanpreet Kaur...Fan!”

The knock also gave a remarkable shape to a childhood ambition that had once been treated lightly around her.

When Harmanpreet was a little girl growing up in Punjab’s Moga and wanted to become a cricketer, hardly anyone there knew that women even played the game.

Her brother used to tease her by asking, “What will you do, open with Sehwag?”

Two years after that out-of-the-world knock, Harmanpreet told this writer during an interview in Surat how much she had wished for people to come and watch women play cricket.

She was grateful that destiny had chosen her to play a part in making that possible.

A catalyst in a changing game

Harmanpreet was the catalyst, but the wider growth of women’s cricket also came through institutional changes.

The BCCI’s decision to take women’s cricket under its wings brought visibility and professionalism to the game.

The launch of the Women’s Premier League in 2023 and India’s victory at the ODI World Cup at home last year expanded the fan base further.

Harmanpreet was the captain who led India to that World Cup win.

It was India’s first global trophy in women’s cricket.

She was also the skipper when the Mumbai Indians emerged as champions in the inaugural edition of the WPL.

Her recent record includes more success with India.

Under her captaincy, India won the Asia Cup and then the gold medal at the Asian Games.

Before that, India crushed England in the Test match at Lord’s.

That was only Harmanpreet’s fifth Test as captain.

The significance of the Lord’s result sits alongside a continuing concern: women get to play very few matches in the game’s finest format, even in these comparatively rosy times.

Stepping down, not stepping away

Harmanpreet’s resignation is from the captaincy, not from international cricket.

She has clearly said that she wants to continue to play for India, and the figures attached to her career could grow further.

She has led India in 51 One-Day Internationals and 155 Twenty20 Internationals.

Overall, she has played eight Tests, 164 ODIs and 210 T20Is.

The figures underline the scale of her involvement across formats, while her continued availability means India can still look to her as a player.

She has plenty to offer in the line-up and remains one of the best batters in the game.

Few women could hit a cricket ball as hard as Harmanpreet could.

That power was not accidental, and it was noticed early.

Her first coach, Yadwinder Singh, made her hit 100 to 150 sixes every day.

She debuted for India in 2009.

Three years later, she led the country for the first time at the Asia Cup in 2012.

It would take a few years before she was made captain full-time, but India emerged as champions at that tournament.

She went on to lead India in many more memorable wins.

The Lord’s image

The photograph chosen for the captaincy announcement brings together several stages of Harmanpreet’s career: the player who wanted audiences to come and watch women’s cricket, the batter whose innings stunned Australia, and the captain who led India to its first global trophy in women’s cricket.

It also places her at Lord’s, where she had led India to a crushing win over England in a historic women’s Test.

As she looked at the Lord’s balcony on that sunny day in July, in the twilight of her career, some of those images may have passed through her mind.

Published - October 11, 2026 01:22 am IST.

Source: The Hindu