Women’s World Cup 2025 – How are the Indian spinners shaping up ahead of key clashes?

While playing a series or a tournament in the subcontinent, it is a foregone conclusion that the spinners take over the mantle of spearheading bowling attacks. The 2025 Women’s World Cup is no different, with three of the top four wicket-takers turning out to be spinners. The Indian team’s strategy, too, is based on picking a slew of tweakers. In the two games India have played so far, they have selected three frontline spinners in Deepti Sharma, N Sree Charani and Sneh Rana. 

Let’s take a deep dive to analyse the Indian spinners – Their strengths, weaknesses and current form. Deepti leads the bowling charts in the tournament with six wickets. Although she looked a touch below par versus Pakistan, Deepti bagged three wickets, with a couple of those scalps turning out to be that of late-order batters. 

Since the start of January 2024, the off-spinning all-rounder has also been one of the fulcrums of the Indian line-up, having taken 47 wickets in 29 ODIs, alongside averaging almost 50 with the bat. In that phase, 31 of her wickets have come in the middle overs, which in turn sits well with the narrative that she is an important member of the ODI set-up. 

Sneh, who is also an off-spinner, is taller of the two. And she perhaps imparts more revs on the ball. In the ongoing World Cup, even though Sneh has picked up two wickets less than Deepti, her economy rate of 3.88 is noteworthy. But against Pakistan, she too wasn’t at her very best. The Indian camp, though, would be trusting the off-spinning duo to find their rhythm versus South Africa.

Charani is clearly the most inexperienced spinner of the lot. The slow left-arm orthodox bowler has made an impressive start to her T20I career, but in ODIs she averages over 47. Her economy rate of 5.51 also doesn’t make for a good reading. Charani still has some fine qualities as a spinner. She does get it to dip on the batter. To illustrate the point further scroll through how she completely befuddled Raghvi Bist with dip and turn in an IPL game this year. 

Radha Yadav is the other left-arm spinner in the squad. For a spinner, Radha is quite tall, and she gets natural flight on the ball. Having said that, her bowling seems to be better suited for T20 cricket. Subtle changes in pace and angles are a couple of her key weapons. No wonder, Radha has already partaken in 89 T20Is compared to just 11 ODIs. But Radha is a good back-up option to have in the mix. Lest we forget that she is a fine fielder too.

The Indian spin trio have to pass the litmus test in their next game in Vizag. It isn’t just about the opponent – South Africa – but at night time the dew could be a factor in Vizag. All that the Indian cricket fans can do is wait with bated breath and hope that the spinners will weave a web around the South African batters.