Flight, fight and fearlessness: the making of Vaishnavi Sharma

Vaishnavi Sharma should have had a wicket with her 12th ball in international cricket. In the first T20I against Sri Lanka, a simple catch went down at short fine leg, and Vaishnavi ended up being wicketless on debut. She was India's most economical bowler on display that evening, going at just four runs an over and did not concede a single boundary in her full quota of four overs. Not for a moment did she make her dejection apparent.

In the following match, Vaishnavi had Nilakshika Silva caught by N Shree Charani, who had dropped the chance in the first game at the same fielding position, for her maiden T20I wicket. She picked up two wickets in the game, featured in all the five T20Is against Sri Lanka and her five wickets were the joint-most in the series. All of it at an economy rate of 6.26 despite dew having an impact in the matches in Visakhapatnam and Thiruvananthapuram. The series quite sums up her cricket career thus far.

Vaishnavi has had a few near-misses, which have acted as a launchpad for something greater. When India started their Under-19 T20 World Cup 2025 campaign, two other left-arm spinners, Ayushi Shukla and Parunika Sisodia, started over Vaishnavi. But she was brought in for the game against Malaysia and there was no looking back.

Vaishnavi picked up 5 for 5, including a hat-trick, and topped the wicket charts for the tournament with a tally of 17. Vaishnavi was then expected to be on teams' radars ahead of the WPL 2026 auction but was overlooked by the five teams. A few days later, however, she received her maiden national call-up as India began their road to the T20 World Cup 2026.

A key characteristic of Vaishnavi, as seen through the series, is her fearlessness. Even in Sri Lanka's best batting performance on the tour - the fourth match where they got to their highest T20I total of 191 - she went at just six per over and returned two wickets, including that of Chamari Athapaththu.

"She has a lot of courage and is a confident cricketer," Bhawna Srivastava, Madhya Pradesh (MP) Under-19 Women's coach says. Srivastava was at the helm when MP won the Under-19 Women's T20 Trophy in 2022-23 with Vaishnavi finishing as the leading wicket-taker with her 23 scalps at an economy rate of just 3.00.

"In junior cricket, it takes time for players to gain confidence. But that is in-built in her. She is able to perform fearlessly. I am not just talking about her bowling but in any facet of the game. She never feels the pressure, she has full confidence in her game. She waits for opportunities to prove herself."

The ability to fight hard takes root in the region she comes from. Vaishnavi is the first woman from Chambal region in Gwalior Division to play cricket for India. Around the time she started playing cricket - in 2013 when she was seven - there weren't a lot of facilities for cricket, leave alone women's cricket, in Gwalior. Her father, an astrologer, saw Vaishnavi's talent and enrolled her at the Tansen Cricket Academy in Gwalior. They lived about 10 kilometers away, but rented a house nearby so that Vaishnavi could train for long.

"When her father brought her to our academy, I saw that she had a smooth action and felt she could be a good left-arm spinner right then," Lovekesh Chaudhary, Vaishnavi's coach who now runs the academy, says. "There wasn't a lot of women's cricket at the time. In fact, she was the first girl student in our academy. So she started training with the boys at our academy, some of whom had played for MP in age-group cricket and Ranji Trophy."

Vaishnavi's ability to vary her flight always impressed her coaches, but her key strength lay in her speed variations. She has developed an ability to bowl from 65kmph to 85-87kmph. Add the ability to impart dip to the mix, she becomes unhittable. Take Kavisha Dilhari's wicket from the fifth T20I as an example. A ball after she was hit for four over extra cover, Vaishnavi looped the ball up at 68.5kph, got it to dip and land on a length on middle, and beat Dilhari's attempted sweep to bowl her. Even Athapaththu's wicket in the fourth game was a result of her denying the Sri Lanka captain the extra pace and space that she generally enjoys.

"She was always good at flighting the ball, so we worked on her rotation - when she imparted more rotations on the ball, she started to get dip and bounce," Sameer Naik, the head coach of MP's senior and Under-23 team, explains. Naik took over the reins of the senior side before the 2025-26 season, but has been a coach at Madhya Pradesh Cricket Academy for over five years now. He worked closely with Vaishnavi when she came into the MPCA set-up as a 15-year-old. During Covid when the teams' squad size was 20, Vaishnavi was included in the senior team's mix as a development player.

"When batters used to step out to attack her, she had to understand the angles and vary her trajectories. That is when she learnt to use the angles at the crease. Over the years, she has also developed a mean arm ball. We also worked on the wide yorkers during the Under-23 competition to keep the ball away from the batters' arc."

Naik didn't have to wait long to watch their methods work. Vaishnavi finished at the top of the wicket-taking charts in the Senior Women's T20 Trophy this season (21 wickets, economy 4.50) as well as in the Senior Women's Inter Zonal T20 Trophy (12 wickets - joint most, economy 6.28). Her ability to stay calm under pressure pleased Naik to no end.

How did Vaishnavi develop that quality?

"There is a lot of men's T20 cricket in Gwalior. Since around the time she was 15-16, I made her play those matches," Chaudhary says. "That made her realise what speeds she should bowl when. Playing boys' competitions regularly helped her develop and deliver under pressure."

It is this ability to withstand pressure that Srivastava banked on in a crucial league stage of the Under-19 T20 Trophy in 2022. MP were chasing 72 against Uttar Pradesh and suffered a collapse of 4 for 11 that left them needing 2 off 2.

"We had a batter [Yamini Billore] left but because I had worked with Vaishnavi for a few years, I knew only she could handle that pressure. So I sent her in ahead of the batters we had and she won us the game."

Since the start of 2023, India have handed T20I debuts to six left-arm spinners - B Anusha, Rashi Kanojiya, Saika Ishaque, Tanuja Kanwar and Shree Charani apart from Vaishnavi. Apart from Charani and Vaishnavi, none of the others were given more than four T20Is even though Ishaque and Kanwar are regulars for their WPL teams.

Srivastava calls Vaishnavi a "jolly person" and one who likes to keep the atmosphere light while being focused at her task. But coming from Gwalior, where she had to strive to get here, has made her a seasoned person. The ability to never back away from a fight is perhaps ingrained in her. That is perhaps what India recognise in Vaishnavi as they work towards adding another world title to their cabinet.