Harmanpreet Kaur leaves the India captaincy in all three formats

Harmanpreet Kaur stepped down as captain of the India women's team in all three formats on Tuesday. She said so in an Instagram post. She will keep playing. Smriti Mandhana, the vice-captain, is the expected successor before Zimbabwe arrive for three T20s and three ODIs from 16 October.

The numbers of the job are exact. Harmanpreet, 37, led India in five Tests, 51 one-day internationals and 155 T20 internationals. She took the T20 captaincy in 2016. She became the full-time ODI and Test captain in 2022, after Mithali Raj left international cricket. Her last match as captain was on 22 September, when India beat Sri Lanka to keep the Asian Games gold in Nisshin. That was a second successive gold, after the 2023 title.

The largest result of the tenure came in November 2025, when India won the women's one-day World Cup at home, a first global title for the side. She also led India to a Test win against England at Lord's in July this year. The other recent result sits in the other direction. India left the T20 World Cup in the group stage earlier this year and missed the semi-finals for a second edition in a row.

The announcement came a day after a meeting in Guwahati. Harmanpreet, Mandhana, and head coach Amol Muzumdar sat with Board of Control for Cricket in India secretary Devajit Saikia to talk through the team's next stretch. The board has not named a new captain in public. Mandhana, 30, is the sitting vice-captain, and the Zimbabwe series starts in ten days. A delay past the first squad announcement would leave the new captain with almost no time to set a bowling order before the first T20.

Harmanpreet's own wording was plain. She wrote that she was leaving the captaincy with a heart full of emotions, and with peace, because she believed the team was in a good place. She listed talent, character, belief and a future she wanted to watch and still be part of. She closed with the line that captaincy ends and the journey continues. She also said she was ready to play for the love of the game again. That is a player's sentence, not a retirement sentence. The selection question is whether a former captain who has just given up the armband walks into the Zimbabwe XI as a senior batter, or whether the new captain wants a different middle order.

The split between formats is the part worth keeping. In the 50-over game she leaves as the captain of a World Cup winner, on home soil, less than a year ago. In T20 cricket the last global tournament ended in the group stage. The Asian Games gold in September was a multi-sport event, not an ICC trophy, and it was won in Japan against a regional field. A new captain inherits a side that has proved it can win a long tournament and has not proved, recently, that it can get out of a T20 World Cup group.

Mandhana's case is positional as much as political. She is already the vice-captain. She opens the batting. A captain who opens can set fields for the powerplay she is about to face, which is a different job from Harmanpreet's middle-order brief. The board still has to say the name. Until Saikia or the selection committee does, the Instagram post is a resignation, not an appointment.

Zimbabwe are not the test of the change. They are the first fixture. The test is the next ICC event, and whether the batter who scored the runs that won a World Cup is still in the XI when that event arrives, under a captain she used to lead. She has not said she is done. She has said the armband is.