![\"Indian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Indian-women-s-cricket-captain-Harmanpreet-Kaur-du_1755958364011.jpg\" "\\"Indian")
Indian women’s cricket captain Harmanpreet Kaur during a press conference. (PTI) <\/p>\nNew Delhi: For the Indian women\u2019s cricket team, ICC tournaments have often followed a frustrating arc. Flashes of dominance, breaching the knockouts, and then heartbreak. It\u2019s happened nine times in ICC events across the two formats \u2013 so near, yet so far.<\/p>\n
Indian women’s cricket captain Harmanpreet Kaur during a press conference. (PTI) <\/p>\n
At a recent ICC event, captain Harmanpreet Kaur said: \u201cHopefully, this time we will give our 100% and try to break that barrier for which all Indian fans and we are waiting for.\u201d Maybe it\u2019s not the skills or strategy that prevents these contenders from becoming champions but it is composure that is dictating their story on the big stage.<\/p>\n
Mental conditioning coach Anand Chulani, who has worked with Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes and several IPL franchises, believes the words we use can decide whether pressure becomes empowering or paralysing.<\/p>\n
\u201cLanguage is extremely important. It casts a spell,\u201d he told HT. \u201cRepeatedly using words like \u2018barrier\u2019, \u2018choking\u2019 often creates mental blocks. Instead, choosing empowering vocabulary like \u2018challenge\u2019 instead of \u2018problem\u2019 and asking questions like \u2018how can I express myself fully and enjoy each moment?\u2019 rather than \u2018what if I don\u2019t perform?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That reframing, he argues, becomes essential as expectations grow. A decade ago, the women\u2019s team could play largely free of external noise. Today, with more exposure, broadcasting and social media, the scrutiny is larger. But pressure, Chulani insists, can be reframed into support.<\/p>\n
He recalled Sachin Tendulkar\u2019s thought process, a mindset that he shared during the 2011 men\u2019s ODI World Cup, a tournament India entered carrying the crushing weight of home expectations. \u201cSachin said we believed that over a billion people were behind us, not on top of us. That gave us immense confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Harmanpreet\u2019s side, a similar mental shift could be decisive with the World Cup being held at home. It starts on September 30. Rather than feeling bogged down by the gaze of millions, they could see it as collective energy carrying them forward.<\/p>\n
Maithili Bhuptani, lead sports psychologist at the Reliance Foundation Youth Sports, says that success will come from moving away from an overtly results-based thinking. \u201cPlayers can break the pattern, firstly, by shifting the mindset from outcome to process,\u201d she told HT. \u201cFocusing too much on winning and losing is likely to trigger a lot of fear of mistakes in the heat of a final.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of worrying about the result, athletes are encouraged to focus on controllables such as a bowler\u2019s pre-delivery routine, a batter\u2019s shot selection or simple communication between captain and player. These anchors keep players in the moment, rather than overthinking about what\u2019s at stake.<\/p>\n
That preparation for pressure, as former India captain Anjum Chopra explains, is not something that can be turned on the night of a final. Chopra says she trained for pressure throughout her career \u2013 be it in the nets, match simulations or even in her backyard. \u201cIt\u2019s something that you don\u2019t start training for just because you\u2019re playing a World Cup,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause one fine day, you will only get that one chance to get your team to victory, score those winning runs, with your team-mates anxiously sitting in the dressing room, hoping that you take them to victory. You have to be prepared for that day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both psychological experts and players stress that exposure to stress must happen in practice as much as in competition. Athletes can be deliberately put under pressure in training. Some tools that work are piping in crowd noise on speakers, simulated scoreboard chases or even distraction drills so that the high stakes of a final don\u2019t feel alien. Bhuptani reiterated former pacer Jhulan Goswami\u2019s appreciation of a \u201cboot camp\u201d model where players endure tough living conditions, bonding drills, team tasks and collective resilience building.<\/p>\n
Breaking a long tournament into \u201csmaller mental segments\u201d is another effective tool. Bhuptani suggests narrowing focus to one run, one over, one innings at a time. Just as crucial are \u201cmicro-recovery moments\u201d between plays. They can range from a deep breath, a posture reset, or a quick release of the last ball so players are not holding on to things that have happened. If it\u2019s a bad delivery or a bad over, they\u2019re not kind of carrying that to the next one.<\/p>\n
India have repeatedly shown that they have what it takes to reach the final stages of global tournaments. The difference between finishing as finalists and champions may not be about rewriting skills and strategies but their relationship with execution under pressure. And as Tendulkar reminded, weight of expectations can also be tweaked to give wings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Delhi: For the Indian women\u2019s cricket team, ICC tournaments have often followed a frustrating arc. Flashes of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,49534,7301,8469,67136,85,7298],"class_list":["post-90312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-cricket-world-cup","tag-icc","tag-indian-cricket","tag-indian-women","tag-sports","tag-womens-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}