Amol Muzumdar’s revenge: India never gave him a Test cap, so he gave India a World Cup instead

For years, Amol Muzumdar waited for a call that never came. He watched teammates rise to glory while his own 11,167 first-class runs were never enough for a Test cap.

But on a muggy night in Navi Mumbai, all that anguish quietly flipped into redemption, as the man once labelled the “greatest Indian cricketer never to play for India” stood behind a historic triumph—the country’s first ICC Women’s World Cup title.

Muzumdar didn’t bask in the spotlight. He didn’t drop to his knees, didn’t cry, didn’t invoke the ghosts of his playing past.

He simply smiled, hugged his captain Harmanpreet Kaur and vice-captain Smriti Mandhana, and stood still, as if holding back decades of frustration that had finally found closure in silence.

This was the full-circle moment no one scripted but cricket itself.

In the 1990s, breaking into Mumbai’s first-class team was harder than cracking the national side today. Muzumdar did it with sheer force—debuting with 260 runs, averaging 83 in his first four seasons, and yet watching as others, many less prolific, got their turn in white flannels. “Cricket gave me everything but the Test cap,” he once confessed to R Ashwin. The heartbreak nearly pushed him out of the game. He packed his kit bag away, told his wife he was done, and stopped showing up to matches. It was his father who slowly pulled him back.

Years later, when he took over as coach of a faltering women’s side in 2023, Muzumdar faced a different kind of challenge—internal rifts, inconsistent results, a team loaded with potential but no identity. Australia had crushed India at home. Losses to Bangladesh and New Zealand followed. But he quietly rebuilt the foundation, stabilised the dressing room, and reshaped belief systems. "After Sir came, everything became stable and smooth," Harmanpreet said.

He demanded fitness, benched stars like Jemimah Rodrigues and Shafali Verma, and had the conviction to reshuffle batting orders. When India slipped mid-tournament, he didn’t lose his temper—but made his point, firmly. “That day, Sir was a little aggressive, in a good way,” Harmanpreet recalled. It sparked a turnaround.

Twelve years after he last played, Muzumdar no longer carries the burden of being the nearly man of Indian cricket. He is now the man who built world champions—with quiet pride and unshed tears.