Deepti Sharma was part of the Indian women’s team that had missed winning the 2017 World Cup by a whisker against England at Lord’s. Playing a final at the Mecca of cricket for the first time, the Indian women, from a position of strength, fell in a heap and lost the game by a mere nine runs. Chasing 229, India had the match in their grasp at 191-3. But they lost seven wickets for the addition of 28 runs in 35 balls, much to the players’s and the Indian fans’s dismay. Now, three survivors from that final — Deepti Sharma, Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana — have been able to redeem much of the pain they have carried for the last eight years by winning the World Cup in Navi Mumbai on Sunday night.     
   
Deepti said that had she stayed on till the end, she could have won it for India. “We required just 10 runs from the last two overs with two wickets in hand. But then I got out to the first ball of the penultimate over and that virtually sealed our defeat. Ever since, that defeat has been rankling me, how we let go of an opportunity of winning the maiden World Cup at the very venue where the Indian men’s team, under Kapil Dev, had won the trophy the first time in 1983. We were all disappointed to have missed that golden opportunity. Luckily, God provided us with another opportunity and this time we made sure we did not mess it up,” Deepti said with a lump in her throat.    

“The 2017 final defeat hurt me a lot, especially as I could have taken the team across, but then I also learned important lessons about how to absorb the pressure, and not to give in till the end. Those bitter moments and experiences have helped me to emerge as a much better player. Winning the trophy as well as the Player of the Tournament award [on Sunday night] has helped wipe out the disappointments we have faced in ICC tournaments over the years,” she said.