New Delhi, Jun 28: In September 2019, a teenager with a jaw-dropping bat swing and a fearless attitude lit up Indian cricket. Shafali Verma, then just 15, exploded onto the international scene with a power game that left many opposition bowlers rattled. But in sports, evolution is inevitable, and in Shafali’s case, it became essential.

As India kick off its five-match T20I series against England in Nottingham, Shafali, now 21, returns to the national fold with the same aggression, but now layered with wisdom, sharpness in the game and a desire to get bigger scores at the international level.

Dropped from the national set-up for almost eight months after last year’s T20 World Cup and lean scores in subsequent ODI series against New Zealand, Shafali’s tough times deepened as her father Sanjeev suffered a heart attack and was in the hospital.

With the domestic season looming and Sanjeev pushing her through practice despite his own recovery needs, Shafali rigorously trained, improving fitness and honing her skills to now be back in national reckoning. The results have been there to see: Shafali was the leading run-scorer in the 2024/25 Senior Women’s One-Day Trophy via 527 runs coming at an average of 75.29 and strike rate of 152.31.

The Senior Women’s One-Day Challenger Trophy was the next tournament to bring up big runs - 414 runs, at an average of 82.8 and strike rate of 145.26. A steady showing for Delhi Capitals in the 2025 Women’s Premier League (WPL) - Shafali amassed 304 runs from nine innings with a strike rate of 152.76 – to be the side’s leading run-getter.

All of this was enough for Shafali to get back into the Indian team, albeit for the T20I tour. “Everyone here is feeling good with her return to the Indian team and hopefully, she will do well. Our HCA camps, trainers, coaches - all of us had a role to play. Whenever she came to the academy, she spent time working on her game with us.”

“As they say in Bollywood terms, the superb first show on a film’s release day, her entry in the Indian team was very much in that way. But as compared to the explosion she made suddenly in 2019, she is now back in the team with maturity and is keen on taking full responsibility in terms of how a senior player should play, and this is kind of hope everyone has from her now,” said Ashwani Kumar, Shafali’s coach at the Shri Ram Narain Cricket Club in Rohtak, to IANS.

Expanding on Shafali’s development, Ashwani, a former Ranji Trophy player, highlighted her focus on shot selection. “It happens many times that early shot selection wouldn’t let her carry forward in the innings. But if you are against good bowling which is more aggressive all of a sudden, then how would you tackle that mentally - we chatted around these things and she took it very seriously.”

Though Shafali continued to play her swashbuckling big hits, there was a visible restraint - an effort to value her wicket and bat deeper into the innings. According to Milap Mewada, fielding coach at Delhi Capitals in WPL 2025, this is precisely the next step in her evolution as an opening batter.

“No doubt in T20, you look to hit almost every ball and if you play 50 T20 games, there are 2-3 opportunities where you will bat for at least 20 overs as an opener. So I would love to see if she plays 65 balls at least in these T20 games. I want to see her play long first, and put a tag on her wicket, and don’t give her wicket easily.”

“When a player gets dropped once or twice, then they realise the value of the India comeback. So I feel whatever happened was good, and I always believe that she will take learnings of last few months very far in her career. So the India T20I comeback has been very timely.”

“I feel her return to Indian team has happened at the right time because in WPL, she was scoring high. No doubt, 2-3 times she got out on 40s, but if she understands how to pass through that event, where she would often lost her wicket, then she can go for another 40-50 runs,” Mewada told IANS.

Another important factor Mewada, who came off a stint with Afghanistan senior and emerging teams as their batting coach, noticed about Shafali was her putting in hard yards to counter her issues against short balls. “While at DC, she was working on facing short balls and the ones going above abdomen height, as facing them was a little difficult for her previously.”

“But at the same time, she didn’t get out that much of it. In T20s, even the bowler has limited overs and balls to bowl. So she was trying to elevate herself and optimise this situation - so that was a good sign.”

That ability to play a longer innings - along with the importance of strike rotation to build her innings - could be Shafali’s ticket to India’s ODI team, especially in a World Cup year. Though Pratika Rawal and Harleen Deol are in India’s top order alongside Smriti Mandhana, Ashwani agrees the T20I series against England could shape Shafali’s path for coming back into ODIs.

“The performances in this series hold huge importance in terms of her coming back to the ODI team. When people are tasked with making a comeback to the national team, a lot of them will say that something wrong happened with them due to this or that. But she understood it well why she got dropped and credit goes to her.”

“Here, the biggest principle of coaching is when a child knows what mistake she is making, then she has a chance to improve. If the children or anyone else does not know what mistake was made or is not ready to accept it, then the scope of improvement and comeback ends there,” says Ashwani.

Mewada too expressed a similar sentiment. “For how long did all the in-form openers in IPL 2025 lasted in their innings? They played nearly till the end or few lasted till the 20th over. If Shafali plays 15 or 16 overs in T20Is, she can even score a hundred.”

“She can capitalise on the powerplay and then play for long, which in turn will get her a chance to play in ODIs. I believe if she gets a start, then she should take it forward. When at DC, I would see her batting and thank God for making a very good player like her,” he added.

While Shafali’s batting is outstanding, Mewada notes that her fitness and fielding remain areas of further improvement. “Suppose if I want to improve my fitness, I have to sweat out. If someone else sweats out, I cannot improve my fitness, and so I will have to work hard for that.”

“In the next 2-3 years, if her fitness improves, then her fielding will improve. For that, she has to conceive a pro-level thought process. But at the same time, she has a very good pair of safe hands. No matter how fast a batter hits a shot, she catches it easily because she is not afraid of catching it. But the only thing is her movement part which depends on her fitness.”

“Like going from point A to point B, how much time does she take to go? So that time if she can minimise, through improved fitness and speed, she will be the number one fielder. Then her running between wickets will be good and speed of reaching the ball will increase in fielding.”

“She can be a wonderful fielder because her pair of hands are safe. But she has to push herself for a lot of fitness training and have that mentality of ‘I should be the fittest in the Indian team’. Shafali is like a jet engine who needs jet fuel to run her plane – and then only she can soar higher in all aspects of the game,” he elaborated.

Shafali’s strong performances in the T20I series against England could lead to her return to the Indian ODI team, a decision the Neetu David-led selection committee will then have to make before the World Cup takes centrestage.

It’s because no other female cricketer in India can rival Shafali’s extraordinary abilities with the bat. The fireworks with the bat are still there - but now, there’s a spark of something steadier, as England might witness the start of a new and mature chapter of Shafali’s career as an Indian cricketer.

(IANS)

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