A hat-trick, a five-for and now a World Cup: the rise of Nandani Sharma
Uncapped, 24 and fresh off a record-breaking debut WPL season, the Chandigarh pacer has gone from unknown to India’s World Cup squad in a matter of months.
Jun 5, 2026
A few months ago Nandani Sharma had never played for India. Now the 24-year-old from Chandigarh is in the squad for a World Cup. The right-arm pacer earned a maiden call-up for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in England after a debut Women’s Premier League season that nobody who watched it will forget in a hurry.
Uncapped players rarely force their way into a World Cup squad on the back of a single tournament. Sharma did exactly that, and the numbers explain why the selectors could not leave her out.
A WPL season that announced her
Sharma finished WPL 2026 with 17 wickets, level with Sophie Devine at the top of the wicket-takers’ list. Devine took the Purple Cap on a better economy rate, but the headline was that an uncapped Indian quick had matched the competition’s most prolific bowler over a full season.
The standout came early. In only her second WPL match she took a hat-trick, the first by an uncapped Indian in the tournament’s history, and went on to finish with 5 for 33. That spell sits among the best figures the WPL has produced, and it made her one of a small number of Indians to take a five-wicket haul in the competition. She played every game for Delhi Capitals as they reached the final, and the league closed with her named Emerging Player of the Season.
What she gives Harmanpreet
India have not been short of seam options, but they have been short of a young quick with this kind of ceiling. Sharma bowls with pace and is willing to attack the stumps, and a breakout season under pressure suggests she does not freeze when the contest tightens. For a side that has often leaned on its spinners in white-ball cricket, that is a useful different thread to pull on.
Her inclusion sits inside a squad led by Harmanpreet Kaur, with Smriti Mandhana as vice-captain, that also brought back experienced names in Yastika Bhatia and Radha Yadav. Sharma is the bolter, the one selection that was not on anyone’s list at the start of the WPL and is hard to argue with by the end of it.
A big stage, quickly
It is a steep jump. There is a difference between bowling four overs in the WPL and doing it at a World Cup, and India will want to ease her in rather than lean on her from the first ball. But talent like this tends to get found out slowly or not at all, and the early signs are that Sharma belongs.
India open their campaign against Pakistan at Edgbaston in Birmingham on 14 June, in a group that also features Australia, South Africa, Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Whether Sharma plays that night or waits for her moment, she has already done the hard part. Getting picked was supposed to be the difficult bit, and she made it look straightforward.