Not Shafali Verma! R Ashwin Calls This Player 'Biggest Reason' For India's WC Win

Ravichandran Ashwin believes that young spinner Shree Charani was the ‘biggest reason’ for India’s triumph in the 2025 Women’s World Cup. Comparing her fundamentals to established spin superstars like Sophie Ecclestone, Jess Jonassen, and Sophie Molineux, Ashwin said the Andhra Pradesh youngster ‘crushed’ the tournament and predicted that she’d be a ‘superstar’ in the near future.

Charani was the undeniable find of the tournament. She picked wickets in all but one match of the tournament. Five of her 14 wickets in the tournament came against Australia across the group-stage match and the semi-final, where opposition captain Alyssa Healy called her the ‘main threat’ of the Indian attack.

“Her ball rotation is at the correct speed,” Ashwin said

on his YouTube channel on Monday. “It matches Sophie Ecclestone, Jess Jonassen, or Sophie Molineux. Her weight transfer… she goes into a lovely side-on position. From there, her hand comes to the front. There is no collapse anywhere. There is no energy leakage. She crushed the World Cup. She is the biggest reason for India to win this World Cup. She is going to be a superstar bowler in the future,” he added.

Charani is only 21 years old and the first cricketer from Andhra Pradesh to play in a World Cup.

Harmanpreet Kaur and team has sown the seed: Ashwin

Ashwin also believes that the World Cup will, in terms of overall impact, amount close to the 1983 and 2011 triumphs.

“The thing is coming from a place like this, Harmanpreet Kaur would have seen a lot of disappointments. The 2017 World Cup final, for instance, where they beat Australia and lost to England in the final. Jhulan Goswami was there. Harmanpreet Kaur has seen such things. She has faced defeats. She has seen defeats from situations where the World Cup could have been won. From the outside, you may not be a witness to the effort she has put in. The seed she has sown, after 10 or 20 years, how Kapil Dev sowed it, how Dhoni sowed it in 2011 or 2007, like how we talk about those, we will talk about this as well,” Ashwin said.