Smriti Mandhana takes over India’s women’s team after Harmanpreet Kaur steps down

Smriti Mandhana was named captain of India’s women’s cricket team on 6 October 2026 after Harmanpreet Kaur stepped down from the role across all formats. The Board of Control for Cricket in India confirmed Kaur’s departure from the captaincy, while The Indian Express reported Mandhana’s appointment as full-time white-ball captain. Kaur says she intends to keep playing for India; the available announcements do not establish who will captain the Test side.

The change ends a captaincy that included India’s first Women’s Cricket World Cup title, won in 2025. It also puts Mandhana, previously Kaur’s deputy, in charge of the limited-overs team before its next reported series, against Zimbabwe beginning on 16 October.

What Harmanpreet Kaur said about stepping down

In a statement released by the BCCI, Kaur said she believed it was the right time to hand over the captaincy and allow the team to move forward under new leadership. She said she wanted to continue representing India as a player and to support the new leadership and younger members of the side. The ICC also reported her social-media statement, which ended: ‘Captaincy ends. The journey continues.’

Those statements describe Kaur’s intention to continue her playing career. They do not confirm her selection for any coming match. The Indian Express said reports had linked her decision to a BCCI review of recent performances, including India’s T20 World Cup exit before the semifinals. That account does not establish that the meeting caused her decision, and the public statements do not set out the private discussions behind the change.

Mandhana’s captaincy experience and immediate schedule

The Indian Express reported that Mandhana scored 434 runs at the 2025 World Cup, the tournament’s second-highest total. Her appointment gives India a captain with experience both as Kaur’s deputy and as a stand-in leader. The report identifies her as the full-time white-ball captain but does not establish an appointment for Tests.

India’s next assignment, according to The Indian Express, is a series against Zimbabwe starting on 16 October, followed by the Women’s Champions Trophy at home in February. Those fixtures give Mandhana an early period in charge of the white-ball side. Kaur’s stated wish to play on does not, by itself, determine whether she will be selected for either competition.

The record Kaur leaves as captain

Kaur’s first experience of leading India came in the 2012 Women’s T20 Asia Cup final, according to the BCCI. Injuries to Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami put her in charge, and India beat Pakistan by 18 runs. She became the regular T20 international captain in 2016, then took over the ODI and Test captaincy in 2022 after Raj retired.

The ICC records Kaur as captain in five Tests, 51 ODIs and 155 T20 internationals. Her final assignment as skipper was the Asian Games final in Nagoya, where the BCCI says India beat Sri Lanka by 147 runs to take a second consecutive gold medal. The scale of that record spans three formats, although the newly announced succession is clear only for white-ball cricket.

Her international standing was established well before the 2025 title. The BCCI highlighted her unbeaten 171 against Australia in the 2017 Women’s Cricket World Cup semifinal, an innings that took India into the final. Eight years later, it said, she scored 89 and shared a 167-run partnership with Jemimah Rodrigues as India chased 339 against Australia in another World Cup semifinal.

India went on to beat South Africa by 52 runs in the 2025 final in Navi Mumbai, securing the country’s first Women’s Cricket World Cup title, according to the BCCI. That achievement forms the backdrop to a change in leadership made less than a year later. For now, the confirmed position is that Mandhana leads the white-ball team and Kaur wants to remain available as a player; a Test captain has not been identified in the reviewed announcements.