The Anushka Sharma story: From Gwalior to Shivpuri to the WPL's bright lights

It does not take long for Anushka Sharma to reveal her competitive streak. She has captained Madhya Pradesh (MP) in age-group cricket and has led teams in the Challenger Trophy that the BCCI organises. She is in her third year pursuing a Bachelors degree in Physical Education and Sports. How does she juggle all this?

The reply is prompt. "Mereko toh bas jeetna achha lagta hai [I only like winning]."

Anushka, 22, is a batting allrounder who was signed by Gujarat Giants (GG) at the WPL 2026 auction after they staved off bids from Mumbai Indians (MI) and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). It did not take long for Anushka to leave a mark; on her WPL debut, she scored a 30-ball 44 from No. 3 against UP Warriorz (UPW), setting the platform for GG to make a winning start to a WPL campaign for the first time.

"I love batting," Anushka tells ESPNcricinfo. "Even though we didn't have a bat of my size, I batted with a thaapi [a bat-shaped wooden implement used in many households for hand-washing clothes], and then my father bought me a plastic bat, and then a wooden bat."

Born in Gwalior, Anushka first started playing cricket in her backyard with her brother, and then with his friends in their neighbourhood. Her brother, who is four years older, loved batting and made Anushka bowl fast. Her energy and spunk while playing with boys older than her did not go unnoticed. When she was in ninth grade, someone in her locality told her father about the Under-16 trials that the Gwalior District Cricket Association was conducting.

"I was like, 'badhiya, kyunki school se chutti ho jaayegi (that's great, I will get to miss school)!'" she says. "I was selected and played a few selection games. That was the first time I had played with girls."

She soon played for MP and captained the team to the final of the Under-19 One Day Trophy in 2021-22, finishing as the team's second-highest run-getter behind Soumya Tiwari, who was part of the India side that won the inaugural Under-19 Women's T20 World Cup in 2023. Anushka also led India B to victory in the Women's Under-19 One Day Challenger Trophy, and finished second in the overall run-scorers' chart.

Arun Singh is the head coach of the Madhya Pradesh State Women's Cricket Academy in Shivpuri, 120 kilometres from Gwalior, and run by the state government. It was an academy for boys led by the former India allrounder Madan Lal, before the then union sports minister Yashodhara Raje Scindia turned it into a women's-cricket residential facility in June 2022, and entrusted it to Arun. The academy selected 24 players, whose daily expenses, coaching, kits, medical expenses and education fees were all borne by the state. Anushka was part of the first batch at the academy, and the move came around the time she was contemplating her future.

As in the case of Vaishnavi Sharma, who is also from Gwalior, Anushka didn't find the facilities for women's cricket in the city to be up to the mark, and her family was contemplating a move to Indore to further her ambitions. This was around the time of Covid-19, which also coincided with Anushka hitting a low.

"I had known Anushka for a while and she was doing well in junior cricket and age-group cricket," Arun tells ESPNcricinfo. He had been working at Laxmibai National Institute of Physical Education (LNIPE) in Gwalior for 21 years when Anushka's father brought her to him in 2016. "She always had good batting potential and I had an eye on her, even if we did not have great facilities for women. After she came to the academy in Shivpuri, I told her, 'Don't get satisfied by just doing well in junior cricket. If you want to compete at a higher level, you have to be different.' She took that to heart and worked super hard."

Anushka was tall and skinny, and the first major work she did was on her strength and fitness. "I knew she had a hitting range that was wider than most girls, but she did not have the strength," Arun says. "We worked on making her backlift high, and then I made her do range-hitting.

"Those sessions were in the centre wicket and we had a bowling machine as well as fast bowlers and spinners. Whenever I made them do range-hitting, I never had the boundary less than 70m [away]. I knew that in women's cricket the boundaries aren't longer than 55-60m. If she is able to clear a 70m boundary, she can easily clear the 60m hit."

Playing for Central Zone in the Senior Women's Inter-Zonal T20 Trophy earlier this season, Anushka hit five sixes, the joint second-most in the competition. Her power-hitting put her on the WPL franchises' radar and she also impressed GG and RCB at trials. "Franchises used to give her scenarios in match simulation, and she would achieve them with a few balls to spare," Arun says.

Arun's sessions with Anushka had a structure. She faced about 500 to 600 balls daily, and worked on her bowling for two or three days a week. She started to feel her game was growing gradually. There was a minor roadblock when her bowling action came under the scanner, but Arun and Anushka worked hard on remodelling it, and those efforts have borne fruit, too. In the last two domestic seasons, she has picked up 26 wickets in T20 cricket alone. "I think a lot of coaches teach the skill," she says. "But mentally, he gave me a lot of confidence about my game."

The other thing Anushka consciously worked on with Arun was hitting in the arc between long-on and deep extra cover against fast bowling. It was evident in her knock against UPW. When Deandra Dottin bowled a slower one in her zone outside off, she thumped her over extra cover for four. And when Kranti Gaud went full and straight, Anushka just planted her front foot and lofted straight over the bowler's head. "With the potential I see in her, Anushka's performance against UP Warriorz was only 50%," Arun says. "She has the ability to do much better than that."

In the following game against Delhi Capitals (DC), Anushka also showed her agility on the field. Jemimah Rodrigues is one of the best exponents of the tap-and-run, but by swooping to the ball quickly from square leg, she denied the DC captain a run. And towards the end of the innings she also made an athletic save at the fine-leg boundary to deny Rodrigues a six, which eventually mattered in a close game that GG won by four runs.

All that hustle typifies Anushka, who just loves to win.