The Indian men’s cricket team won the Champions Trophy and the Asia Cup in 2025 while the women clinched their maiden World Cup title.
For Team India, the year 2025 was nothing short of a roller-coaster ride.
There were peaks like the ICC Champions Trophy win, the Asia Cup triumph and a brilliant Test series on English soil, mixed with rather forgettable outings, none more glaring than the 2-0 Test series loss to South Africa at home.
Here are some of the highlights for the Indian men’s cricket team in 2025.
A breezy start and Champions Trophy glory
Having endured a difficult time at the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which spilled into this year from last, the Indian men’s cricket team set the tone for 2025 with a dominant home white-ball outing against England in January. The team won the five-match T20I series 4-1 and swept the ODIs 3-0.
The India vs England T20I series also saw Abhishek Sharma score 135 – the highest score ever made by an Indian batter in T20Is – at the Wankhede in the final match.
India carried the momentum into the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy, jointly hosted by Pakistan and the UAE in January and February. The team won an unprecedented third title in the ODI showpiece, which had returned to the international calendar after an eight-year absence.
The Men in Blue, led by skipper Rohit Sharma went undefeated in the tournament, with the highlight being a King Kohli century guiding them to victory against Pakistan in the group stage. The captain himself stepped up as the hero in the final against New Zealand.
India’s next engagement on the international front was a five-match Test series against England away from home but major news came in before that with both Rohit and Virat announcing their retirement from the longest format before that tournament.
Shubman Gill era begins
With Shubman Gill named the new Test captain, a new era began for the Indian cricket team and in the most dramatic fashion possible.
In what was one of the most engrossing international red-ball series in recent memory, India and England ended up sharing the honours.
The hosts won the first Test in Leeds and the third rubber at Lord’s, while the visitors took the win in the second match at Edgbaston and a dramatic series-saving six-wicket victory in the final contest at The Oval.
Interestingly, it was Gill who led from the front. The Indian skipper scored a whopping 754 runs, including four centuries and a double hundred, at an astonishing average of 75.40.
Asia Cup triumph and a mixed tour Down Under
Extending the momentum into T20Is, India lifted the Asia Cup title in the UAE in September.
Led by Suryakumar Yadav or ‘Sky’ and with Abhishek Sharma in sensational form, India beat their arch rivals, Pakistan in the final to secure a record-extending ninth continental title. Tilak Varma was the hero of the final with his unbeaten 69 rescuing India following a slow start while chasing 146.
Back home to host the West Indies for a two-match Test series in October, India swept it 2-0 as Gill recorded his first series win after being named India’s full-time red-ball captain. Gill was also appointed the India’s ODI captain shortly after, replacing Rohit Sharma at the helm.
His first assignment in the format wasn’t quite as successful as the longer format, as India lost a three-match series 2-1 to Australia Down Under in October. A Rohit Sharma century in the final match at Sydney saved India from a clean sweep.
India did considerably better in the following five-match T20I series, beating the Aussies 2-1 after the first and final matches were abandoned due to rain.
Challenging Test series against South Africa at home
November brought the lowest point of India’s cricketing year and perhaps an alarming continuation of an emerging pattern. After New Zealand snapped India’s 12-year unbeaten run in home Test series last season, the brief relief of a dominant win over West Indies proved short-lived.
South Africa reopened the wound and deepened it, handing India a bruising 2-0 defeat that underscored the team’s growing vulnerabilities in the longest format under head coach Gautam Gambhir.
A 408-run loss in the second Test in Guwahati will go down as India’s heaviest loss (by margin of runs) in the format. The Men in Blue salvaged some pride by beating the Proteas 2-1 and 3-1 in the following ODI and T20I series that followed to end the year on a high.
While India’s inconsistent Test form under Gambhir will remain a major talking point in 2026, the team will also aim to build on its impressive white-ball momentum.
With both the ICC World T2O title and Asain Games titles on the line, India enter the new year with a chance to reinforce their dominance in limited-overs cricket even as they work to steady the ship in the longest format.
Away from the senior international circuit, 2025 also saw what could potentially be the birth of a future superstar in the 14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi!!
The teenager has emerged as cricket’s brightest new star, exploding onto the Indian Premier League(IPL) at just 14 for Rajasthan Royals to become the league’s youngest debutant in the tournament’s history and smashing a 35-ball hundred – the quickest by an Indian batsman!
He continued to dismantle age-group and domestic cricket and scored the quickest Youth ODI ton in history. He also became the youngest to score 100s in the SMAT and the Vijay Hazare Trophy. The second feat also made him the youngest List A centurion in history.
Off the field, he became Google’s most-searched Indian of 2025 and earned a rare Instagram spotlight, cementing his status as a teenage phenomenon.
Indian women’s cricket team in 2025
For the Indian women’s cricket team, the year 2025 was historic on multiple fronts.
After starting the season with a 3-0 ODI series sweep over Ireland at home, Harmanpreet Kaur and Co. went on to win a tri-nation series in Sri Lanka, also involving South Africa, in April-May.
On tour in June-July, the Indian women made history as they beat England 3-2 in a five-match affair to win their first-ever T20I series against the Lionesses. A Harmanpreet century also wrapped up a 2-1 ODI series win in the UK.
A tough home ODI series against the mighty Australians followed as India went down 2-1 after a hard-fought series. The loss, however, led up to the biggest triumph in Indian women’s cricket history.
Maiden Women’s World Cup victory
At the ICC Women’s ODI World Cup 2025 which India co-hosted with Sri Lanka, Harmanpreet and Co. beat the Lankans and arch-rivals Pakistan in their opening two matches but three back-to-back losses against South Africa, Australia and England put them on the brink of elimination.
A clutch victory in an almost must-win scenario against New Zealand, however, saw the team advance to the semis despite their last game against Bangladesh being washed out.
India, however, was yet to face their toughest tests. Up against record seven-time champions Australia, a team unbeaten in their last 15 Women’s ODI World Cup matches, India chased down a tournament record score of 338 riding on a sensational century by Jemimah Rodrigues.
Shafali Verma, who came into the squad in place of the injured Preetika Rawal for the knock-out rounds, then stepped up in a big way in the final against South Africa with her knock of 87 guiding India to a match-winning total.
South Africa, despite a century by Laura Wolvaardt, fell 52 runs short as Deepti Sharma, the Player of the Series and the top wicket-taker of the tournament with 22 wickets, bagged a fifer.
Smriti Mandhana was India’s top run getter in the tournament with 434 runs to extend her run in what has been an exceptional year for her with the bat.
Across 23 ODIs, Mandhana piled up 1362 runs at an average of 61.90 and a blistering strike rate of 109.92, slamming five centuries and five half-centuries. She finished the year as 2025’s leading run-scorer in women’s ODIs.
Mandhana’s tally – both runs and centuries – is more than any other batter has managed in a single year in WODIs. During the course of the year, she also became only the second Indian after Mithali Raj to cross 5000 runs in the format.
Though her T20I numbers for the year – 261 runs in eight games – is far from her usual best, she also became only the second player in history after Suzie Bates of New Zealand to cross 4000 runs in the shortest format.
Smriti Mandhana has entered the coveted 10000-run club in women’s cricket. Only three batters – Mithali Raj, Suzie Bates and England’s Charlotte Edwards – have ever reached the five-digit mark in women’s cricket to date.
India wrapped up their year with an outstanding display against Sri Lanka by beating them 5-0 and giving them a sound trashing!
Under coach Amol Muzumdar, 2025 marked a true coming-of-age for the Indian women’s cricket team – a transformation from a side known for sporadic brilliance to a resilient unit capable of delivering consistently under pressure.
The newfound composure, however, will be put to the test with an Asian Games gold to defend and a T20 World Cup looming in 2026.
Courtesy: Written by Raghav Ravichandran