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Journalism of Courage
THE DAY after Kranti Gaud wins the player-of-the match award for her three wickets against Pakistan in the ICC Women’s World Cup game in Colombo, her family in Ghuwara, a nagar panchayat in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh, receives the ultimate honour. The narrator at the ongoing Shiv Mahapuran Katha in Ghuwara praises Kranti, India’s newest 22-year-old pace sensation, from the dais in front of a 5,000-strong congregation.
“Sirf Ghuwara ko iss beti pe ghamand nahin hai, aaj pure Bharat ko iss beti pe ghamand hai (Not just people in Ghuwara, the entire nation is proud of Kranti),” says “Maharaj ji” Vipin Bihari, a popular preacher in Bundelkhand who has clocked a lakh subscribers on his YouTube channel.
Bihari then asks the person recording the spiritual discourse to train his camera on Mayank, Kranti’s older brother, who is asked to stand in front of the barricaded crowd. A video that has since gone viral in Ghuwara shows Mayank beaming while a thunderous applause is heard in the background.
“Being praised in front of so many people as the brother of the girl who helped beat Pakistan in a World Cup match was humbling. My heart was filled with pride, I had a lump in my throat,” Mayank says later.
Kranti made her ODI debut against Sri Lanka at Colombo in May 2025 and had figures of 0/22 in five overs
Her ability to move the ball at pace and her incisive opening burst puts the opposition on the backfoot
One of India’s fastest pace-guns, along with Pooja Vastrakar
What brought her prominence was the third match of the England series in July, when she claimed 6/52, playing a key role in India’s 13-run win and 2-1 series victory
Won the Player of the Match in the World Cup clash against Pakistan on October 5, delivering an outstanding spell of 3/20 in 10 overs
The week-long katha is being organised at the Higher Secondary School ground, a crucial landmark in Kranti’s journey. It was here, in 2017, that Kranti played her first leather-ball match. The organisers of a local cricket tournament held in memory of the former chairman of the nagar panchayat, Raj Bahadur Singh Bundela, had added a women’s match to the schedule. The team from the neighbouring Sagar district was a player short and 15-year-old Kranti had found herself in the team. That day, the girl, who until then had only played tennis ball cricket with the boys, took two wickets and made 25 runs in a leather-ball game.
As luck would have it, the promoter of women’s cricket in the region, coach Rajiv Bilthare, was at a tournament in Tikamgarh, a one-hour drive from Ghuwara. Egged on by the tournament organisers, Kranti’s father Munna Singh, a former police constable, took her on his motorcycle to meet the coach. Kranti appeared for the trials and in a week, joined Bilthare’s academy in Chhatarpur, 80 km from Ghuwara.
This was her first big break in her journey from Bundelkhand to becoming India’s rising star.
The girl from Ghuwara
It takes a village — in Kranti’s case, a panchayat — to raise a woman cricketer.
Ghuwara has few avenues for cricket coaching, leave alone a proper cricket pitch. Kranti, the youngest of six siblings in a Scheduled Tribe family, is the first cricketer from Chhatarpur district, man or woman, to play for the country. Tikamgarh, the nearest railway station, is 40 kilometres away. The nagar panchayat, with a population of nearly 19,000 people, has only one direct bus service to Chhatarpur. Ghuwara’s 50-bed community health centre is its lifeline and the Friday market its main attraction.
Before Kranti’s 3/20 against Pakistan dominated the news cycle, the last time Ghuwara made it to the front page of local papers was when a wild bear mauled a man in Ramtoriya village nearby.
Kranti, her father Munna, mother Neelam and five siblings live in a rundown two-room police quarters along the Sagar-Tikamgarh road that runs through Ghuwara. There are eight such dwellings in a row in front of which is a compound with a sprawling mahua tree. A white hatchback with ‘Kranti Express’ printed on the rear windscreen is parked in this compound. Bought after Kranti bagged a Women’s Premier League contract with UP Warriorz, the car was taken on a long trip the day it came home.
“Around 10 pm on May 5 (this year), Kranti got a call about being selected to the Indian team for the tri-series in Sri Lanka. It was the first time she had been selected to play for India. She had to reach Bhopal to catch the 9.30 am flight the next day. So around 2.30 am, Kranti, a couple of friends and I drove the car to Bhopal. We got her there on time. That’s how the car came to be called Kranti Express,” Mayank says.
The family is also proud of the cricket pitch at the far end of the police quarters’ compound, the spot where a tireless Kranti played tennis-ball cricket.
“She played here with the children of other policemen, all of them boys,” says Munna, pointing to the spot. When Kranti got serious about cricket, the families in the police quarters pooled in money and built a cement pitch.
Overcome by emotion, Mayank makes a video call to his sister, who is in the Indian team hotel room. The older “bhaiyas” who with whom Kranti first played cricket, hang on to Mayank, each ready to give a personal recollection. They switch between Kranti and “Rohini”, her “ghar ka naam”. Happy to see her panchayat cricket gang, Kranti beams on the video call.
“The cement wicket is not in the best condition now. But I have fond memories of playing in front of the house. They will tell you all the stories,” says Kranti.
Rajkumar a.k.a. Raju was part of the cricket gang. Now a physical education teacher in Ghuwara, he was among the first to spot Kranti’s natural talent. “She used to hang around when we played matches at the higher secondary school ground. She joined us on and off. At the start, she was a batter and had a clean bat swing. She made a name for herself by hitting sixes when the boys bowled. Even as a 10-year-old, she was naturally athletic. Notice her bowling action at the World Cup, it is smooth and easy,” Rajkumar says.
‘Even as a 10-year-old, Kranti was athletic. Notice her bowling action at the World Cup, it is smooth and easy,’ says Rajkumar, who played cricket with her in the village
Coach Bilthare, 56, has had his share of battles recently. Until a few months ago, he was in and out of hospitals after a late diagnosis of pre-diabetes. But he is glad to be back on his feet at his Sai Sports Academy, where Kranti returns to train when in Chhatarpur.
The bare-metal main gate of the academy opens into a single-file walking path amidst overgrown bushes and shrubs. What was once a wheat field has now been converted to a cricket ground with three main pitches and four practice nets.
Of the 60 trainees at the academy now, about 15 are girls, most of them inspired by Kranti. “Since Kranti started playing for India, there have been many more inquiries from families of girls. Not just from Chhatarpur but nearby districts too. A national-level hockey player called the other day. Another girl from Delhi is coming to Chhatarpur to join my academy,” says Bilthare.
Anshika Patel and Bharti Verma, two teenaged fast bowlers, and Ruchi Choubey, a Rohit Sharma fan, are among the women trainees at the academy.
“My brother heard about this academy after Kranti’s success. Initially, my parents were not keen that I play cricket but their mindset has changed,” says Anshika.
Bilthare is credited with creating a culture of women’s cricket in the district. He is also responsible for reviving leather ball cricket. A government sports officer and a division cricket player, he started the academy in 2013. “The academy, at a government school, had one practice wicket. Tennis-ball cricket was flourishing in Chhatarpur and the leather-ball game had died. But I wanted children to start playing proper cricket again so we used the leather ball,” Bilthare says.
Three years later, he felt it was time to gather a full-strength women’s team. “There were a couple of girls playing cricket but not enough to form a playing 11. I visited schools to see if children were interested. Around 40 girls turned up for training, of which 20 were selected. We had a team.”
Kranti was primarily a “hard-hitting batter” when her father brought her to Bilthare for the trials that day on his motorcycle, after her success with the leather ball in the match at Ghuwara village.
Hoping to mould her into an allrounder, Bilthare asked her to bowl. “Outside the off-stump, down the leg side, full toss… she was erratic. But she had something I had not seen in many girls. Furti… quick and natural athletic movement and great reaction time. I realised she had great potential. I taught her how to land the ball on the seam and corrected her run up. In-swing came naturally to her. She’s also a clean striker of the ball,” says Bilthare.
It was this “furti” and “great reaction time” that helped Kranti pull off the stunning caught-and-bowled dismissal of in-form South Africa opener Tazmin Brits in the game in Visakhapatnam on October 9. In a split second, Kranti stuck out her left hand to catch Brits’ full-blooded punch.
Bilthare prides himself in spotting talent early. Learning about Kranti’s under-privileged background, he had waived off Kranti’s fees and given her a full cricket kit, complete with spikes and a bat. Initially, she stayed at the coach’s house before moving into a room with another girl cricketer.
Kranti moved up the ladder quickly. In 2018, she captained Sagar Division, which has six districts, including Chhatarpur. The Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association (MPCA) included her in their camp.
“When she was 15, she featured in the MPCA’s tournaments for Under-16 and Under-19 girls. The MPCA selectors follow age-group cricket closely. Kranti was sent to the MPCA academy in Indore, where Chandrakant Pandit has been the head coach,” says Abhilash Khandekar, who was MPCA president from 2019 until a few months ago.
In December last year, Kranti, with a four-wicket haul versus Bengal in the final, was one of the stars of Madhya Pradesh’s maiden Senior Women’s ODI Trophy triumph. A month earlier, she was already on the radar of the Women’s Premier League team, UP Warriorz.
“Last November, one of our scouts heard of Kranti and we brought her to the trials in Surat. We picked her purely because of her good action, a great release and her ability to bowl a bouncer. She is strong and very good in the field as well. We took a punt with her because the others who had played senior women’s T20 cricket did not have the pace she had,” says Kshemal Waingankar, the former Mumbai medium pacer and Chief Operating Officer and Director of Cricket of UP Warriorz.
A month later at the WPL auction, Kranti went for Rs 10 lakh to the Warriorz. A part of the money was used for the down payment of the white hatchback, the ‘Kranti Express’.
A ground for Kranti
After India beat England in the decider of the three-match One-Day International series in Chester Le Street in July, captain Harmanpreet Kaur, the player of the match for her 102 from 84 balls, graciously handed over the award to Kranti for her 6 for 52. “We have been dying for such a fast bowler,” Harman had said.
At her home in Ghuwara, the trophy is encased in a glass cover, the ball with which she took the six wickets placed on the top. “Those who came to see Kranti wanted to hold the trophy. We were worried it would get damaged. So we covered it,” says her mother Neelam.
She is just done ferrying buckets of water from a hand pump. After her husband Munna was terminated from the police force in 2012 following a dispute with colleagues, the family had fallen on bad times. Neelam’s jewellery had to be pawned and Mayank took on a job as a bus-ticket booking agent in Delhi’s Nizamuddin. He’s back home since the turnaround in the family’s fortunes, courtesy Kranti.
“We are a big family. When my husband lost his job, we just about had enough to eat. The jewellery is gone but Kranti plays for India now. I have no regrets. We only made small sacrifices,” Neelam says.
The family, she says, was at the receiving end of snide remarks when Kranti played cricket with the boys. But together with two of her older children, Mayank and Anita, Neelam convinced her husband to let Kranti play.
Those early-day critics are her fans today. Kranti’s panchayat cricket gang had installed an LED screen beside the pandal of the Shiv katha for the game against Pakistan on October 5. “People were watching and cheering like it was a festival. If India reaches the final, we will have to install more screens,” says Rajkumar, now her manager.
He has another pressing job at hand — fixing the wear and tear of the turf at the higher secondary school ground. Kranti has tasked Rajkumar with restarting the local tournament, which stopped during the Covid pandemic. “After the World Cup, she wants to play a tournament here. Now, I need to figure out how to get the grass growing again. She’s an India player and the pride of Ghuwara. We can’t let her down.”
