Harmanpreet leaves the India captaincy after the World Cup and a second Asian Games gold

Harmanpreet Kaur stepped down as India women's captain in all three formats on Tuesday, a day after she, vice-captain Smriti Mandhana and head coach Amol Muzumdar met BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia in Guwahati. She announced the decision in an Instagram post. She is 37. Cricinfo listed her captaincy record as five Tests, 51 ODIs and 155 T20Is. Her last act in the job was the second successive Asian Games gold, won in Nisshin last month. The 2025 ODI World Cup, India's first women's global title, sits one place behind that on the list she is leaving.

She wrote that she had left the team in a good place and was ready to play for the love of the game again. The meeting in Guwahati was about the roadmap, not a send-off. Selection chair Amita Sharma's committee had been divided, Cricinfo reported, after India went out in the group stage of the T20 World Cup for a second time in June. Harmanpreet had wanted to lead the side at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. The Instagram post closes that plan. The board has not named a successor. Mandhana, who was in the Guwahati room, is the obvious candidate and has not been appointed in the first reports.

The split between formats is the part of the record that explains the timing. The ODI World Cup and the Asian Games gold are the two results the captaincy will be remembered for. The T20 World Cup exits are the results that kept the selection conversation open. Giving up all three formats at once, rather than the T20 job alone, means the next captain inherits Tests as well, a format in which India have played only five matches under her. That is a thin sample. It is also the format with the next bilateral windows already on the future tours programme. A new captain who has never led a Test side will walk into a schedule that still treats the longest format as an occasional series rather than a home season.

Her club role does not change. She is expected to keep the Mumbai Indians captaincy in the Women's Premier League, where the side is chasing a third title. International retirement is not part of Tuesday's announcement. She remains available as a player. The practical question for Saikia is who walks out for the toss in the next ODI, and whether that person is named before the next selection meeting or left open through the WPL. Mumbai's title defence and India's next bilateral are different jobs. Keeping one and leaving the other is a split the board has accepted in the men's game, with franchise captains who are not national captains. It is less tested in the women's calendar, where the same dozen players carry both.

The captaincy she is leaving was built on a single innings as much as on the 2025 trophy. In the 2017 World Cup semi-final at Derby she scored 171 not out against Australia, an innings that took India to a first final. She did not take the trophy that year. The 2025 win closed that gap. Between the two tournaments she was in and out of the leadership group, dropped, recalled, and eventually given all three formats. The 155 T20Is as captain are the bulk of the job. They are also the format in which the June exit happened. A captain who won the 50-over title and lost the 20-over group twice is a coherent record, not a contradiction. The selection committee's split, as Cricinfo described it, was over which half of that record should decide the next year.

The numbers she leaves on the board are specific. Five Tests, 51 ODIs, 155 T20Is, one World Cup, two Asian Games golds, and a group-stage exit in June. The Guwahati meeting was on Monday. The post was on Tuesday morning. The board had not, by Tuesday night, said who would replace her. Until that name is published, Mandhana remains vice-captain on the last sheet, and Harmanpreet remains the player who will still set fields for Mumbai.