From 70 minutes to 7 hours: How Amol Muzumdar channels Kabir Khan of Chak De

New Delhi: On the morning of the ICC Women's World Cup final, India head coach Amol Muzumdar gathered his players in a tight huddle at Navi Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium and asked for just one thing – seven hours of total focus. 

The talk, in a video shared by ICC on Instagram, felt like a real-life echo of the “Chak De! India” locker-room scene, only sharper and made for this team.

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“For the next seven hours, we cut the noise. We keep them out of our lives. We write our own story. For the next seven hours, we create history,” he told the group. 

India did exactly that. Powered by Shafali Verma’s 87 off 78 balls and Deepti Sharma’s 58, the hosts posted 298/7 and then bowled out South Africa for 246 despite Laura Wolvaardt’s 101. The 52-run win delivered India’s first Women’s World Cup crown. 

After the match, Muzumdar struggled to find words but not sentiment. He called it an “unbelievable achievement,” said the players had worked extremely hard, and that they deserved every bit of the applause coming their way. 

“We did not treat our losses as defeats, only as games we had not finished. We stayed in the tournament and today we are world champions. This is a watershed moment for Indian cricket,” he said. 

The coach’s message before the toss drew a clear line from Shah Rukh Khan’s Kabir Khan and his “70 minutes” speech to this team’s “seven hours” of clarity. 

The idea was simple, shut out everything else and take ownership of the script. For the players who have lived through near-misses, self-doubt and noise, it became the frame that held the day together. 

Seven hours later, the story was theirs.