Have seen that last ball at least 1000 times: Harmanpreet on life after World Cup

It's a moment that changed her life and the trajectory of Indian women's cricket for the foreseeable future. Little wonder then that Harmanpreet Kaur has viewed her full-length diving catch of Nadine de Klerk in the World Cup final at least a 1000 times so far.

The catch by the skipper sealed India's 52-run victory over the South African Women's team for a historic first ever World Cup trophy.

“My life has completely changed. I have seen that last ball at least a thousand times, not only me, our team had been waiting for this moment for many years. I feel like watching that moment again and again," the 36-year-old history-maker said in an exclusive interview during her visit to the PTI headquarters here.

"I really don't know what I was thinking when I was taking that last catch. It is hard to express in words, it means the world to me because I always dreamt of winning the World Cup, and finally we did that and now it has been two weeks and it is very special feeling and hard to express," she added.

Harmanpreet deserved a long break after the World Cup victory, which was a result of years of hard work. However, her off-the-field schedule has been busier than ever and she has not even got the time to go back home since she took that winning catch in the final.

The campaign itself had its fair share of ups and downs and perhaps the biggest challenge was the three consecutive losses that the team endured in the league stage, triggering a social media backlash that bordered on misogyny.

Harmanpreet made light of the offensive online comments, saying the harsh criticism showed that better was expected from her team.

"We took all the criticism in a positive way. People were criticising us because we could have played well. Fans were expecting a lot from us. We had a meeting... our head coach (Amol Muzumdar) talked to us... he said, 'we are better than this'," she recollected.

"If people were trolling us, it was because we were not playing cricket at the level we could, we could do better than this....We had another meeting after reaching Mumbai that now we only have one way that is to win all the matches.

"It was not to prove the critics wrong but we were also feeling that we were not playing our best cricket, and our best was yet to come," she added.