"I Hope This Is Just the Start": Rohit Sharma on India's Five World Cups, the Women's History at Navi Mumbai and the Culture Driving Cricket's Golden Generation

Rohit Sharma said it simply, but the weight behind the words is not simple at all. “To come out with flying colours and achieve what we have achieved, not just the men’s team but also the women’s team winning that World Cup in Navi Mumbai was fantastic to watch. I hope this is just the start.”

He was speaking on Saturday at the announcement of the fourth edition of the T20 Mumbai League — now expanded to include a concurrent inaugural women’s competition — and the occasion was modest. But the context he was speaking from was not. In the twelve months between November 2025 and March 2026, Indian cricket — across genders, age groups and formats — achieved something that has no precedent in the sport’s history.

India’s ICC Title Harvest: An Unprecedented Year

India, at the time of Rohit’s Saturday address, were simultaneously the holders of five major ICC titles — a feat confirmed when India won the U19 Men’s ODI World Cup: the Men’s T20 World Cup (2024, defended 2026), the Women’s ODI World Cup (2025), the Champions Trophy (2025), the U19 Men’s ODI World Cup (2026), and the U19 Women’s T20 World Cup (2025).

That number has not been achieved by any country in the sport’s history. Not Australia at their peak. Not the West Indies dynasty. India, in 2026, hold five concurrent global titles.

The Women Who Started the Golden Run

Of all the titles in that sequence, it was Harmanpreet Kaur’s women’s side that set the foundation — and their victory is the one that Rohit specifically highlights, because it was, in every meaningful sense, the breakthrough that changed the conversation permanently.

India had come agonisingly close to the women’s ODI World Cup title before. The 2017 final at Lord’s — where a young and relatively inexperienced Indian side, captained by Mithali Raj with Harmanpreet at middle-order, came within nine runs of beating England on a pitch that suited neither side — remained the defining near-miss for years. Two more World Cups came and went. The heartbreak accumulated.

The 2025 edition was different from the start. The venue shifted from Bengaluru to Navi Mumbai in August 2025, and Harmanpreet described the change as a psychological reset: “When the venue changed, we all started messaging in the group. We were manifesting. We said, ‘The final is going to be there — we won’t leave it now.’ As soon as we reached Mumbai, we said, ‘We’ve come home now, and we’ll start fresh.’”

On November 2, 2025, at the DY Patil Stadium before a crowd of 39,555 — with artificial stands erected outside because demand had exceeded the venue’s official capacity — India posted 298 for 7. Shafali Verma hit 87 off 72 balls. Smriti Mandhana anchored the top order. Deepti Sharma hit 58 and then took 5 wickets as South Africa, driven forward by Laura Wolvaardt’s magnificent 101, fell short at 246 all out in 45.3 overs. India won by 52 runs.

Harmanpreet caught the final catch that completed the win. Smriti Mandhana ran into her arms from mid-on. Both broke down.

“This trophy isn’t an overnight achievement but the result of two years of hard work by the entire team,” Harmanpreet said. “Amol sir’s systematic approach, where we reviewed our progress every two months, helped us move forward step by step.”

The “Amol sir” reference is to India women’s head coach Amol Muzumdar, the former Mumbai batter who took charge in 2024 and implemented a structured campaign plan that treated every bilateral series and home warm-up tournament as a stepping stone toward one specific outcome.

The U19 Generation That Makes This Feel Like Infrastructure, Not Luck

Rohit’s remark about “luck” at the T20 Mumbai League event had a specific resonance. He spoke about how talent alone is insufficient — you have to be at the right place at the right time, to be seen. The U19 tournaments have become, under the BCCI’s expanded academy system, the place where the next generation is being seen before they are ready to be found.

India’s U19 Men’s ODI World Cup victory in February 2026 was headline-worthy for two reasons. First, Vaibhav Suryavanshi — the 15-year-old from Saharsa, Bihar, who had already made his T20I debut for the senior national team — scored an unbeaten century in the final against England, hitting 31 sixes across the tournament as India set a new record for boundaries in a U19 ODI World Cup final. India won by 100 runs.

Second: it was India’s sixth U19 Men’s ODI World Cup title, extending their record as the most successful team in the tournament’s history.

The U19 Women’s T20 World Cup in February 2025 — won under Niki Prasad’s captaincy, unbeaten across the entire tournament, the first team in the competition’s short history to win every single match — is similarly emblematic. India beat South Africa by nine wickets in the final, with all-rounder Gongadi Trisha taking 3/15 and scoring 44 as Player of the Match and Player of the Tournament.

“No Secret to Success”: Rohit on the People Behind the Numbers

The most instructive part of Rohit’s T20 Mumbai League address was not the numbers. It was the acknowledgement he made about who the numbers belong to.

“There is no secret to success, it’s all about hard work. The men’s and women’s team have worked really hard to achieve what they have achieved today. Of course, it’s not just about the players who perform on the field, there are so many people behind the scenes who have put in so much hard work into that success so that the team can have success. A lot of people and personnel to give thanks to,” he said.

The remark was sincere, not diplomatic. The transformation of Indian cricket’s support infrastructure — NCA physios, strength and conditioning coaches, data analysts, mental performance coaches, women’s academy expansion at state level — has been as important to this golden run as any individual batter or bowler. Harmanpreet said the same thing after the Women’s World Cup, specifically citing the NCA’s facilities as transformative: “Earlier, we had to compromise due to limited facilities, but this new centre is so good that India won’t have to wait long for our next World Cup.”

The T20 Mumbai League: A League That Grows With the Culture

The T20 Mumbai League — returning for a fourth men’s edition and first women’s edition — is, in Rohit’s framing, the domestic corollary to what the national teams are achieving.

The logic is straightforward: when young women in Uttar Pradesh watch Harmanpreet lift the World Cup at DY Patil Stadium, some of them pick up a bat. When young men in Mumbai watch Vaibhav Suryavanshi score a century for the U19s on national television, some of them go to the nets the next morning. The Mumbai League — with city-level competition, ground-level prize money and state-association visibility — is the first formal competitive structure many of those players will encounter. Adding a women’s competition to the fourth edition is the League matching the culture it operates within.

“With three new women’s teams added, it’s getting bigger,” Rohit said. “Making three games in a day happen is not easy. A big round of applause to all the groundsmen as well who put their hands up and got the grounds ready.”

The Hitman who won the 2024 T20 World Cup, who helped win the 2025 Champions Trophy, who captained India across 213 internationals is now the face of Mumbai cricket’s domestic ecosystem — watching the next generation from the same vantage point where, once, someone was watching him from the boundary of an Under-14 game in Borivali and deciding he was worth noticing.

He turned out to be worth noticing. “You got to be lucky,” Rohit says now, “but there is no substitute to hard work.” The five World Cups India hold as of today were not luck. They were infrastructure, sustained attention, professional systems and individual will — over twenty years, across two genders, from Kanpur to Kolkata to Navi Mumbai and back again.