Relying on instinct, rhythm and the rattle of a ball they could not see, an Indian contingent led by Deepika TC clinched the inaugural Women's T20 World Cup for the Blind with a seven-wicket win over Nepal. The victory caps an unbeaten campaign, weeks after Harmanpreet Kaur's team hoisted the women's ODI World Cup.
Chasing Nepal's 114/5, India cruised to 117/3 in just 12.1 overs at the P Saravanamuttu Stadiu in Sri Lanka. Phula Saren, who comes from a Santhal village in Odisha, anchored the innings with a match- defining 44 off 27 balls.
Blind cricket is played with a plastic ball filled with ball bearings, allowing players to track it by sound. Teams include a mix of B1 (full visual impairment), B2, and B3 players, balancing the field with varying levels of vision. Bowlers deliver the ball underarm so it skims or bounces along the pitch, and batters rely on sound, timing, and spatial memory rather than sight. Fielders call out "yes" before every move, making communication as crucial as skill. With Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Australia, and the US also in the fray, India had topped the round-robin stage unscathed.
In their run to glory, the women in blue decimated Sri Lanka by 10 wickets, Nepal by 85 runs, US by 10 wickets, and Pakistan by eight wickets before crushing Australia by 209 runs. Then, on Nov 23, they sealed the crown against Nepal, their fiercest rivals in blind cricket with a nearly two decade head start in the game.
“The girls cried happy tears and so did I,” said Mahantesh Kivadasannavar, the chairman of the Cricket Association for the Blind in India (CABI), the cricket wing of Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled, which organised the £600,000 event with Sri Lanka as co-host.
“Many of the players come from humble, rural, first-generation backgrounds,” explained Bengaluru-based Mahantesh, adding that they discovered cricket through blind schools, NGO-led camps, and state programmes. “In these pockets, parents don’t send their girls out of the house,” he said.