ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025: India Hosts for a Record Fourth Time, Historic Milestones & Legacy

India hosts the ICC Women’s World Cup 2025 for a record fourth time, marking new milestones and celebrating its rich legacy in women’s cricket.

ICC Women's Cricket World Cup 2025 (Image Source: Google)

With the ICC Women's Cricket World Cup 2025, being held in India, many new records shall be created. Although India has never won the Women's Cricket World Cup, its contribution to advancing the journey of the event is significant. Few milestones:

- This 50-over World Cup shall be the first senior ICC women's tournament being hosted in the Indian subcontinent since 2016 (India hosted the ICC Women's T20 World Cup that year).

- India has previously hosted the Women's Cricket World Cup in 1978, 1997, and 2013 and 2025 shall be the fourth time to host the event, which no other country has done so far.

- The 12 Women's World Cups played so far have been held in five countries:

- Three times each in India, England, and New Zealand

- Twice in Australia

- Once in South Africa

As Pakistan qualified to play this time, Sri Lanka was added as co-host under the policy of playing matches under a hybrid model, between India and Pakistan.

Each of the previous three Women's World Cups played in India, has various interesting stories linked with it. 1978 was the first time the Women's Cricket World Cup came to India. Incidentally that year, India made its Women's World Cup debut also. By 1973, India had formed Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI), with Premila Bai Chavan as president. Even then, unfortunately India Women didn’t play in the 1973 inaugural event.

In fact, the WCAI was established but the structure for women’s cricket in India was still in its infancy, with limited resources, experience, and funding. In this background hosting the 1978 Women’s World Cup was a big achievement. The tournament was played from January 1 to 13 in a round-robin format, across four Indian cities.

Teams : South Africa were not invited to play as they were facing sporting boycott because of their racial policy. Originally six teams were supposed to play viz India (hosts), Australia, England, New Zealand, the West Indies, and the Netherlands but only Australia, New Zealand and England came. The Netherlands and the West Indies withdrew due to financial constraints.

Believe it that the World Cup was on the verge of being cancelled due to low participation but the International Women's Cricket Council supported the event. This was the first and the last time that the four teams competed in the tournament.

Diana Edulji was the first India captain for their first World Cup Assignment. Result of India matches:

- Vs England : India suffered a heavy 9-wicket defeat in their opening campaign.

- Vs New Zealand: Another heartbreak as India lost by 9-wicket defeat.

- Vs Australia: This time chasing the 151-run target, they suffered a 71-run defeat.

From these humble beginnings, India Women have grown into one of the strongest cricketing nations and are one of the contenders of the World Cup title this time. Similarly, as far as organizing the event is concerned, India has made rapid progress.

The 1978 Women's World Cup was in fact supposed to be held in South Africa but they lost the chance because of the sporting boycott of the country, under Anti-Apartheid policy. A surprising but encouraging feature of the World Cup in India was that it attracted a good crowd in most of the matches. The business end of the tournament was the most awaited clash of the event between Australia and England on January 13 in the last league match.Both the sides were undefeated in the tournament, turning this clash as the final. Australia emerged as champions with a seven-wicket win. This clash at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium in Hyderabad attracted thousands in the stadium. Matches were also played in Kolkata, Jamshedpur, and Patna.

Senior sportswriter Sharda Ugra says, ‘Because India hosted its first men’s World Cup in 1987, people don’t always remember that the Women’s World Cup was held earlier. They were ahead of what the men were going to do. Women’s achievements in sports, like we see with female scientists, haven’t been recognized enough. There certainly needs to be a formal recognition, not financially alone, but an inclusion of their names in the history of the game.’ She is not wrong.