MUMBAI: The Indian women’s cricket team may have suffered an early exit from the 2026 Women’s T20 World Cup, but India will still have representation in the tournament’s biggest match — and in historic fashion.Vrinda Rathi, who hails from Nerul in Navi Mumbai, has been appointed by the International Cricket Council (ICC) as one of the on-field umpires for the Women’s T20 World Cup final between hosts England and Australia at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground on Sunday. She will officiate alongside Jacquline Williams.Rathi’s appointment marks a significant milestone, as she becomes the first Indian woman umpire to officiate in a Women’s World Cup final. She is also only the second Indian umpire to stand in an ICC World Cup final after Ram Babu Gupta, who officiated in the 1987 Men’s World Cup final at Eden Gardens alongside Pakistan’s Mahboob Shah. Match referee GS Lakshmi, meanwhile, officiated in the 2023 and 2024 Women’s T20 World Cup finals.The 37-year-old Rathi has built an impressive officiating career, having stood in 20 Women’s One-Day Internationals, 77 Women’s T20 Internationals and one Women’s Test match.“She’s a good, hard-working umpire. She’s amongst the top umpires in the ICC panel in the women’s game. She was a scorer originally. Then, she became an umpire at my insistence. ‘You can have a career in umpiring,’ I told her. In 2014, Rathi cleared the umpires exam conducted by the Mumbai Cricket Association, and four years later, passed the umpires’ exam conducted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (in 2018). Within one year (in 2020), she, along with Narayanan Janani, were promoted to the ICC Development Panel of Umpires,” Ganesh Iyer, former BCCI umpire and ex-chairman of the Mumbai Cricket Association’s umpiring committee, told TOI.Before taking up umpiring, Rathi was a medium-pacer and represented the Mumbai University women’s team for four years, although she was unable to break into the Mumbai senior women’s side.Rathi created history in December 2023 when she became the first Indian woman to officiate in a women’s Test match, standing in the one-off Test between India and England at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai.Her rise through the officiating ranks has been rapid. In 2022, she officiated at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. On January 10, 2023, she, along with Janani Narayanan, became one of the first women to stand as on-field umpires in a men’s domestic match in India, officiating the Ranji Trophy fixture between Goa and Pondicherry.In 2023, Rathi also officiated at the Women’s T20 World Cup in South Africa, stood in the final of the inaugural Women’s Premier League and was part of the officiating panel at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China.
