To ensure Women’s World Cup winner Amanjot Kaur didn’t lose focus, her family didn’t tell her about grandmother’s heart attack

“My mother Bhagwanti has been Amanjot’s pillar of strength since the day she started playing cricket outside on the street and the park at our Phase 5 residence in Mohali. While I would be at my carpentry shop at Balongi, she would make sure to sit outside the home or at the park to oversee Amanjot playing with the boys as well as other girls. After she suffered a heart attack last month, we did not tell Amanjot about it and the last few days have seen us spending time in hospitals for her treatment. The World Cup win has surely come as a balm in these tense times for us,” Singh told The Indian Express.

While Amanjot had initially started as a skater as well as a hockey player, she would also play cricket in the Mohali neighbourhood. With Amanjot spending most of her time playing cricket, Singh would be on the lookout for an academy for his daughter after an elder neighbour suggested the father take his girl for professional training in 2016. At one of the academies in Chandigarh, the school needed Amanjot to enrol first before coach Nagesh Gupta took Amanjot under his wings. This was at the Government School in Sector 32.

“When I met Nagesh sir, he told me to send Amanjot to the government school ground in Sector 32. I would take extra work at my shop or private work too so that I could give Amanjot whatever she needed for her training and would also pick her and drop her to the academy in Chandigarh from Mohali. Later, we got her a scooty and she would tell me, Papa chinta chi karni. Main vaddi ho gai han (Papa, don’t worry, I am a grown up now),” recalls Singh.

Gupta, now a BCCI Level 2 coach, would see Amanjot rise up in the ranks in the Chandigarh cricketing circle. Amanjot would make the move to the newly BCCI affiliated UT Cricket Association (UTCA) Chandigarh in 2019. Amanjot would score 370 runs for UTCA in the BCCI Senior One Day Trophy in the 2019-20 season apart from scoring more than 457 runs in the BCCI U-23 One Day tournament the same season and also scoring 184 runs and claiming ten wickets in BCCI U-23 T20 Trophy followed by a India A call-up.

“When she came to the academy for the first time, I was impressed by her follow through and wrist position. She had a good run-up too and would keep her arms close during the run-up. But her bowling was a bit erratic. So we worked with spot bowling and made minor changes in her wrist position and changed the position of her leg which was falling wider off the stumps. During that time one, I saw her batting once in the nets and the bat punch off the ball was very good. So I knew that she could become an all-rounder. She did not hesitate to train. And that helped early in her career,” Gupta told The Indian Express.

In 2022, Amanjot shifted to Punjab again and the last three years have seen her making her international debut with a woman of the match award in her debut WT20I match against South Africa in Tri-Series in South Africa in 2023, apart from being picked in the WPL auction by Mumbai Indians in the 2023 auction. However, a year later a back stress injury and a hand ligament injury put her on the sidelines for more than eight months.

“We knew that she had to regain her strength post the recovery and she has to be calm mentally,” Gupta recalled.

Amanjot had scored a half-century against Sri Lanka coming at the number seven spot with the team placed at 124 for 6 in India’s opener in the World Cup and had also claimed the all important wicket of centurion Phoebe Litchfield in the semi-finals against Australia. Gupta also talks about how batting up and down the order early in her career has helped Amanjot and how she had worked on adding more variations in her bowling. “Early in her career, sometimes Amanjot would come 5-6 or sometimes would move up the order. We would work on her off side game as one requires that on turning wickets too.

As for Singh, he knows it will be a long night for his family including his wife Ranjeet Kaur and Amanjot’s siblings Kamaljot Kaur and Gurkirpal Singh as they take turns to oversee the health of his mother. “My mother is the biggest supporter for Amanjot and once she gets well, she will make sure that Amanjot is showered with all the love and the win is celebrated,” Singh said.

Nitin Sharma is an Assistant Editor with the sports team of The Indian Express. Based out of Chandigarh, Nitin works with the print sports desk while also breaking news stories for the online sports team. A Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award recipient for the year 2017 for his story ‘Harmans of Moga’, Nitin has also been a two-time recipient of the UNFPA-supported Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity for the years 2022 and 2023 respectively. Nitin mainly covers Olympics sports disciplines with his main interests in shooting, boxing, wrestling, athletics and much more. The last 17 years with The Indian Express has seen him unearthing stories across India from as far as Andaman and Nicobar to the North East. Nitin also covers cricket apart from women’s cricket with a keen interest. Nitin has covered events like the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the 2011 ODI World Cup, 2016 T20 World Cup and the 2017 AIBA World Youth Boxing Championships. An alumnus of School of Communication Studies, Panjab University, from where he completed his Masters in Mass Communications degree, Nitin has been an avid quizzer too. A Guru Nanak Dev University Colour holder, Nitin’s interest in quizzing began in the town of Talwara Township, a small town near the Punjab-Himachal Pradesh border. When not reporting, Nitin's interests lie in discovering new treks in the mountains or spending time near the river Beas at his hometown. ... Read More

Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.

© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd