A first-ball six to start a T20 World Cup campaign is as big a statement as there can be. But three dot balls to follow and a wicket after that perhaps sum up Shafali Verma's T20I career. The opening victory against Pakistan - and the margin of it - ticked a number of boxes for India that would have made their journey from Birmingham to Leeds sweeter, as Smriti Mandhana and Richa Ghosh returned to form to bookend the strong batting display.
It was, however, Mandhana herself who had acknowledged the lack of runs from India's opening pair after the 2-1 series loss to England just before the T20 World Cup, as she and Shafali put on starts of 19, 27 and 0 in the three T20Is. Shafali had racked up 260 T20I runs this year - second-most for India - before the T20 World Cup got underway. But it's her average of 23.63 which is concerning. That number is lower than other India frontline batters, barring Ghosh, whose role of being a finisher comes at the cost of a lower average.
Shafali's average of 22.16 this year is a steep decline from her own 52.12 last year, easily her best calendar year in terms of both average and strike rate (170.90). It's also quite distant from the 2026 T20I averages of other experienced openers such as Laura Wolvaardt (74.80), Hayley Matthews (38.75) and Chamari Athapaththu (33.50), who not only came into the tournament with a better run of scores but also carry the added responsibility of leading their teams.
Even though Shafali was India's brightest batting spark in the 2020 T20 World Cup at just 16 years old, it was her inability to become a reliable name at the top that made her eventually lose her place in the T20I side after the 2024 edition. After that, she never shed the tag of being "inconsistent".
Shafali scored four half-centuries on return in 2025, and two more this year, but it's her T20 World Cup record barring the one in 2020 that doesn't quite live up to the reputation of someone who has played over 100 T20Is across nearly seven years. In the last two T20 World Cups, Shafali scored 199 runs in nine innings to average an unimpressive 22.11 compared to her career average of 27.28. The most telling number from those two editions is that the batter who is counted among the most destructive in the world managed just one six in those two tournaments combined while facing 186 balls.
Openers such as Beth Mooney (in 2020 and 2023), Alyssa Healy (2023), Matthews and Stafanie Taylor (both 2016) have defined their legacy by playing match-winning knocks in the finals of these World Cups to bring glory for their teams. Even though that's a high bar to match, Shafali's first aim this time will perhaps be to better her own record in T20 World Cups, especially in the format most suited for her style of play.
Shafali could take inspiration from her team-mate Ghosh, who similarly put an end to her own patchy form with 34 off 17 balls against Pakistan, that followed her stunning 68 off 36 against England in the warm-ups.
Shafali could also take heart from the fact that it was in England in the summer of 2021 that she made her ODI and Test debuts, and was the Player of the Match in that Bristol Test with scores of 96 and 63. She could also jog her memory back to only last summer, when she hammered 176 runs in five innings while averaging 35.20 and striking at 158.55 to help India script their maiden T20I series win on English soil.
Even though openers' success in T20s is mostly judged by impact more than their half-centuries, Shafali is often criticised for squandering her blitzy starts, something she admitted at the start of 2025 while saying, "my starts are good, but building an innings has been an issue".
Shafali has neither crossed 50 nor faced more than 40 balls in a T20 World Cup game yet, and after her five-ball stay against Pakistan, there remain four more opportunities for Shafali in the league stage.
She is no stranger to English conditions or T20 World Cups, but if she packs a punch in this edition, like she did in 2020, it will help India a long way in making the knockouts and chasing the double after lifting the ODI World Cup last year. That triumph, incidentally, was also due to Shafali's late entry into the squad.
