Why dynamic dynamo Richa Ghosh will be key to India's World Cup chances

"Sahi lag raha hai kya?"

Richa Ghosh laughs at the end of our phone call. From the time she entered the sport as a teenager, her hair has been short. But over the past year or so, she has grown it long and so she asks in jest, if it looks all right. Her go-to attire used to generally be jeans with a shirt or T-shirt, but now she is experimenting with different clothing styles, and she feels long hair goes well with most.

It's not just her hair that has undergone a transformation. She has also made numerous tweaks to her batting style to suit India's needs and to grow into a reliable finisher. Her initiation into the sport was as a top-order batter who could keep wicket. For Bengal, she largely played in the middle and lower-middle orders as a 16-year-old, even chipping in with seam bowling because the side had more established wicketkeepers. When she made her India debut, it was again in the middle order, but with an increased focus on wicketkeeping.

After Amol Muzumdar took charge as India's head coach in December 2023, he experimented with Ghosh as a top-order batter in ODIs - she batted four times at No. 3 and opened the innings twice. However, heading into the 2025 ODI World Cup at home, India have decided they are better off having her bat at No. 6, as a finisher.

"When I was small, I used to love hitting sixes," she says. "But it was not as if I did not know to bat in any other way." Batting in the middle order for India made her realise she could play the finisher's role and also the hitter's.

In only 43 ODIs, Ghosh is already India's third-highest six-hitter, with 24; only Smriti Mandhana (65) and Harmanpreet Kaur (54) have more, but they have played 108 and 152 matches respectively. Since Ghosh's ODI debut in September 2021, only Mandhana (37), Chamari Athapaththu (34) and Chloe Tryon (26) have hit more sixes. In her sixth ODI, Ghosh scored India's fastest fifty in the format, off 26 balls. Her game, though, is not just about hitting sixes.

"When I started playing ODIs, it was a lot different. I was getting out [looking] to play big shots, so I started thinking of what I needed to do. If I wanted to make my team win by taking the game till the end, only sixes won't help; I had to play grounded strokes as well as rotate the strike.

"I started having conversations with Amol sir and my coaches in Bengal. I worked hard on playing spinners and tackling pacers. And playing Test cricket helped me change my technique. That helped me pace my ODI batting better."

The WPL has given Ghosh the perfect platform to hone her finishing skills. In the opening game of WPL 2025, Royal Challengers Bengaluru were chasing 202 against Gujarat Giants and Ghosh walked in when they needed more than half those runs off 54 balls. Ellyse Perry was out soon after, but Ghosh went on to score 64 not out off 27 balls, which included a stunning 23-run over assault on Ashleigh Gardner, to complete the WPL's highest successful chase.

Only Shafali Verma, with a strike rate of 162.59 makes her runs quicker than Ghosh, who goes at 150.96 in the WPL, among those who have scored at least 600 runs. While Verma has played in the top order, Ghosh has never batted above No. 4 in the competition.

What is Ghosh's secret sauce for batting under pressure?

"You need to know what the bowler is bowling, or what she can bowl, firstly. If you don't know what that bowler wants to do even after looking at the field set, you will panic about playing a shot.

"You have to keep two options ready. If she bowls [a particular] delivery: which shot is open for me? I look at the ball and hit, seedhi baat [simple as that]. I don't think too much. These things happen in the back of my mind, but my mantra is: see the ball and play it. Just watch every ball and face it."

Two key aspects of her personality help her thrive under pressure.

"I am a quiet person, but I don't know if I am calm on the ground. Sometimes the match situation does affect you, but I try and not let it affect me a lot, and stay calm. Aggression is also my plus point - it is not that only calmness is my plus point. If a wicketkeeper or a fielder is constantly in my ears, I enjoy it. In fact, when they keep sledging, I enjoy it more, because it is irritating them. Nothing happens to me. It is not that I don't talk back - I do. But I enjoy both, silence as well as aggression."

Ghosh is already a World Cup winner with India's Under-19 side but now she wants the "asli wala" [real deal].