Batting for the boundaries Cricket World Cup win helps to change way India treats women

Growing up in rural India, Shafali Verma always knew she had a hunger to play cricket.

- Hannah Ellis-Petersen Delhi

But in her small town of Rohtak, in the north Indian state of Haryana, cricket was not a game for girls. Aged nine, desperate to play, she cut her hair short, entered a tournament disguised as her brother, and went on to win man of the match.

Verma's determined father, Sanjeev, in the face of the refusal by every cricket academy or training centre to accept his daughter, enrolled her as a boy. "Luckily, nobody noticed," he recalled,when Verma made the national women's team at 15 years old.

On Sunday, Verma stood triumphantly with her teammates as they held aloft the Women's World Cup, making history as the first Indian women's national team to win the cup. Years of struggles and sacrifices by the women -defying social stigma, a lack of resources and juggling manual jobs between training - made their win even more extraordinary.

It came at a critical turning point for women's cricket in India, where the sport verges on a national religion and is a multibillion dollar industry-but is also widely regarded as a "gentleman's game".

Female cricketers were only given full-time professional contracts in 2017. The Women's Premier League (WPL) was established in 2023.