She struck a fifty in the recent T20I series in England.
One of the notable omissions in India Women’s squad for the Australia ODIs is Shafali Verma. The 21-year-old is also snubbed from the upcoming ICC Women’s ODI World Cup 2025 in India and Sri Lanka. Despite being part of the India A team on the tour of Australia and scoring a half-century, Verma is excluded from the Harmanpreet Kaur-led senior team.
The two teams will play the first and second (September 17) games of the 50-over series in New Chandigarh, and the last match (September 20) in Delhi.
As for the first ODI, the news from the match centre is that Harmanpreet Kaur has won the coin toss and elected India Women to bat first. The captain is playing her 150th ODI match at her home ground.
During the pre-series press conference on Saturday, captain Harmanpreet Kaur acknowledged Verma’s importance in the team. However, she believes the 25-year-old Pratika Rawal is better suited for the team, though she is yet to face Australia for the first time.
“Whenever Shafali is in the team, there is extra motivation that whenever she bats well, we win. At the same time, Pratika Rawal has put up very good numbers with great confidence. I think she brings stability to the team. Rather than thinking about who’s in the team and who’s not, the ones who are there are equally important. Shafali has been the most important player in the team. We will definitely miss her, but Pratika has given us very good starts. We are dependent on her,” said Harmanpreet.
In comparison, Rawal is indeed a better opener than Verma. Her average in ODIs (54) is almost double that of Verma (23), while playing 15 fewer games. She has clearly made more runs (703) in the format, with a similar strike rate for both batters lingering in the 80s. Rawal’s ODI debut in December 2024 against the West Indies came two months after Verma’s last played 50-over match against New Zealand, where she managed just 12 runs.
India Women: Pratika Rawal, Smriti Mandhana, Harleen Deol, Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh (w), Deepti Sharma, Sneh Rana, Radha Yadav, Shree Charani, and Kranti Goud.
Australia Women: Alyssa Healy (w/c), Phoebe Litchfield, Ellyse Perry, Beth Mooney, Annabel Sutherland, Ashleigh Gardner, Tahlia McGrath, Georgia Wareham, Alana King, Kim Garth, and Megan Schutt.
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Verma first donned the blue jersey in September 2019 in Surat against South Africa Women. She was out for a four-ball duck in the first T20I of the five-match bilateral series. She went on to make 64 runs in her remaining three outings. But she had to wait till June 2021 for her ODI debut.
Verma’s form has often blown hot and cold for India Women. She has performed exceptionally well in patches, while also enduring streaks of single-digit scores. In T20Is, she has surpassed 2,000 runs in 89 appearances at a striking rate of 131.03. She smashed her 11th fifty on the recent England tour.
During the Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2025, the Delhi Capitals (DC) batter delivered a performance similar to the previous year, scoring over 300 runs in nine innings at a strike rate exceeding 150.
On the other hand, her last half-century in 50 overs came 13 innings ago in July 2022 against Sri Lanka. The opener is yet to amass her maiden century in the white-ball format.
To conclude, the 21-year-old is undoubtedly a swashbuckling batter who climbed up the ranks quickly in the Indian team. She is yet to work on her consistency, especially in the longer format of the game. But for now, Verma will miss the ODI series against Australia, followed by the prestigious Women’s World Cup 2025, hosted by India and Sri Lanka, starting from September 30.
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