- India Women start their tour of England with a T20I at Chelmsford on Thursday.
- They will need some big performances if they are to repeat their World Cup heroics from 2025.
- We look at three players that could make an impact if called upon during the summer.
India Women begin their tour of England with the first T20I at Chelmsford on Thursday. They play three T20Is against England before beginning their Women’s T20 World Cup campaign against Pakistan on June 14.
While they then play a one-off Test match, we will focus on the T20 part of their summer. They lost their most recent T20I series 4-1 in South Africa. Before that, the Women in Blue beat Australia 2-1 in Australia.
With a big summer ahead of them, the Indian side will have to show a lot more consistency if they are to repeat their Cricket World Cup heroics at the T20 version of the event.
3 India Women cricketers to look out for ahead of their English summer
While the usual suspects like Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur and Jemimah Rodrigues are expected to lead India’s charge in England, we look at three relatively newer faces that could make an impact in the summer.
Bharti Fulmali
31-year-old Bharti Fulmali is in the middle of her second stint with the Indian T20I side. She failed to impress the first time around, scoring just 23 runs in two innings at a strike rate of 69.7.
In her two innings since making a comeback, she’s shown what she can do in one. Fulmali scored a 30-ball 40 in the final T20I against South Africa as wickets tumbled around her.
It is in the WPL, however, that Fulmali has made her best impressions yet. In the 2026 edition, she may have averaged just 19.8 but her 119 runs came at a strike rate of nearly 147. In 2025, she scored 133 runs, striking at 172.7 while averaging 66.5.
The explosive right-handed bat showed the world exactly how good she could be in a game against the Mumbai Indians last year. Chasing 180, the Gujarat Giants were reeling at 70-5 in the 11th over when Fulmali walked in. She scored 61 off 25 balls, hitting eight fours and four sixes, to bring GG right back into the game.
Once she fell, the Giants’ collapse continued and MI won by nine runs. If Fulmali was to replicate that sort of form ahead of the World Cup, maybe the Women in Blue can dare to dream.
Nandani Sharma
Chandigarh-born medium pacer Nandani Sharma proved to be quite the revelation in the 2026 edition of the WPL. She was the joint highest wicket-taker at the tournament, picking up 17 wickets in her debut campaign.
The 24-year-old was also named the Emerging Player of the season at WPL 2026. She set the women’s cricket alight on just her second day at the job, taking 5-33 against GG in just her second game of the competition. With that spell, she also became the first Indian pacer to pick up five wickets in the WPL.
In fact, she picked up at least one wicket in nine of her 10 WPL matches in 2026. And her incredible first impression at the big stage saw her rewarded with a place in the squad for the T20I series against England and the World Cup to follow.
Yastika Bhatia
The final name on this list is one that has played the most cricket for India among the three – Yastika Bhatia. Bhatia had been away from the Indian setup for the past few months with a serious knee injury.
The injury kept her out of India’s World Cup winning side in 2025 and also Gujarat Giants’ WPL 2026 campaign. The elegant left-hander will be raring to return to the international stage, having also missed her team’s tours of Australia and South Africa.
A visibly talented batter, Bhatia will be determined to set her T20I numbers right. While a strike rate just above 88 and an average a little over 16 hardly impresses, Bhatia will have set her sights on this tour of England to change that impression of her.
And what better stage to do that than the biggest one of them all? While she may not be a guaranteed starter in this Indian side, Bhatia is versatile as a batter. Her keeping also makes her an excellent choice to come in as a replacement if needed.
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