It's rare that a batter celebrates a regulation six with multiple fist pumps. Especially if that batter is uncapped and is facing the fastest bowler in the world. You do not want to rile them up. But Gujarat Giants' Kashvee Gautam did not hold back when taking on Mumbai Indians' Shabnim Ismail in Vadodara in WPL 2025.
It was an offcutter from Ismail. Gautam jumped out of her crease and, despite not getting to the pitch of the ball, went through with the shot. The ball sailed over the long-on boundary for a 71-metre six and out came the celebration.
In the second innings, Gautam found more reason to celebrate: she trapped Harmanpreet Kaur lbw for just 4.
Across the three seasons of the WPL, 14 bowlers have taken Harmanpreet's wicket, and only five have hit Ismail for a six. Only one name features on both lists: Kashvee Gautam. And she did it in just her third match.
The 21-year-old seam-bowling allrounder has been the find of this WPL season. While she has batted only twice in six games so far, her nine wickets are the joint-third-highest in the tournament. And her economy rate of 5.30 makes her the only one, among those who have bowled at least six overs, to concede less than a run a ball.*
Numbers like that validate Giants decision to splurge INR 2 crore for Gautam at the 2024 auction, making her the most expensive uncapped Indian in the WPL. For perspective, Harmanpreet had fetched INR 1.8 crore in the first auction.
"I was very excited," Gautam tells ESPNcricinfo. "Everything was going well. Wickets were coming. Runs were flowing. But I also knew the WPL has the best players in the world and I needed to add a few more things to my game."
But, a few days after the auction, she was bowling at her coach Nagesh Gupta's academy in Panchkula when she twisted her right ankle. "Such things happen with cricketers all the time," Gupta says. "But the pain didn't go away, and it turned out to be a fracture." The initial estimate was that it would take two months to heal. It took much longer, almost ten months, and Gautam had to miss the 2024 WPL.
****
Born and brought up in Chandigarh, Gautam was drawn to cricket when she was ten. She also skated and played volleyball and other sports, but "gully cricket had a different pull".
"Back then, I was mainly focused on bowling," Gautam says. "I had a long run-up and a proper action - mera haath ghoomta tha [I could bowl round-arm]."
One day, Sanjay Dhull, a former Ranji Trophy player and a neighbour, saw Gautam playing and suggested to her parents that they take her to Gupta.
"After one point, I started feeling suffocated. I would have negative thoughts every day. 'Will I be fine or not? Will I ever make a comeback?' Slowly, it turned into anxiety" Kashvee Gautam on dealing with the long injury layoff
"When Kashvee came to me, she already had a good action, decent pace, and a bit of inswing too," Gupta, who is Amanjot Kaur's coach as well, recalls. "But I believe every player should have at least two skills. So we also worked on her batting."
Gautam started her age-group cricket with Punjab but moved to Chandigarh when they got BCCI affiliation in 2019. Even though Chandigarh were in the Plate group, her performances were scarcely believable.
She was 16 but was playing Under-23 cricket. In a T20 against Arunachal Pradesh, she picked up four wickets in four balls. In the one-day tournament that followed, she emerged as the leading wicket-taker with 31 wickets in nine matches. Her average: 2.90; economy rate: 1.27.
The big headlines came for her ten wickets in an Under-19 one-day game against Arunachal Pradesh in February 2020. Gautam first scored 49 off 68 balls, and then took all ten wickets, including a hat-trick.
She almost repeated the bowling feat in the next game against Sikkim. She started with a first-over hat-trick and took the first eight wickets but finished with 9 for 14.
"The ten-wicket haul was special," Gautam says. "The BCCI put out a video and it went viral. Everyone saw I could bowl good inswing, and all the wickets were either bowled or lbw."
Hat-trick
— BCCI Women (@BCCIWomen) February 25, 2020
10 wickets in a one-day game
49 runs with the bat
Leading from the front
4.5-1-12-10!
Kashvee Gautam stars as Chandigarh beat Arunachal Pradesh in the @paytm Women's Under 19 One Day Trophy. #U19Oneday
Scorecard https://t.co/X8jDMMh5PS pic.twitter.com/GWUW9uUgtF
Later that year, Gautam was selected for the Women's T20 Challenge, for Trailblazers. While she didn't get to play, the experience was "an eye-opener".
"The cricket that I saw there was completely different," she says. "When I bowled to the likes of Smriti [Mandhana] and [Deandra] Dottin in the nets, I realised I needed to improve a lot."
She didn't take long to level up. In November 2023, she picked up 5 for 8, and yet another hat-trick, against North-East Zone in the inter-zonal T20 trophy. When England A toured India, she turned the first T20 around with two wickets in one over.
All that paved the way for the record bid at the WPL auction.
****
Gautam loves tattoos. She has one of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati inked on her right biceps and a trident on the left forearm. Just above the trident is a big "NO" striking out fear, limits, and excuses.
There is another tattoo on her left biceps that looks something like: G > ^ v.
"It means God is greater than my ups and downs," Gautam says. But when the down of the foot injury came, she found herself in a very negative space.
Initially, the Giants team management took care of her. "Mithali Raj [then team mentor] and Michael Klinger, our coach, asked me to stay with the squad in Bengaluru," Gautam says. "I wondered what I would do here. But they took me to every practice session and asked me to sit behind the nets and observe. I started noticing what each batter and bowler was doing and what I could add to my game. When I came back to Chandigarh, I discussed it with Nagesh sir."
But the injury was taking a long time to heal, which confined Gautam to her house. She wasn't used to that. "After one point, I started feeling suffocated. I would have negative thoughts every day. 'Will I be fine or not? Will I ever make a comeback?' Slowly, it turned into anxiety."
Thankfully, Gautam has a good support system that includes her coach, his wife, and a mental-fitness coach, and they suggested meditation exercises, maintaining a gratitude journal which "helped a lot".
The self-doubt was still lingering, though. "Since I hadn't bowled for so many months, it felt as if I had forgotten how to bowl," Gautam says. "I was worried my first ball after the recovery would go and hit one of the poles on either side of the net. But all the visualisation I did during the injury period came in handy."
Gautam made a steady comeback to domestic cricket. To prepare for the WPL, her coach made her bowl on flat pitches.
"Because if you can bowl well on flat wickets, you can bowl well anywhere," Gautam says. "For batting, I developed a few more shots, especially against spinners, because they bowl most of the overs on Indian wickets. So I practised the sweep and the reverse sweep a lot."
But when the much-awaited WPL debut came, against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, nerves got the better of her. Mandhana and Danni Wyatt-Hodge carted her for three fours in her first over. She bowled just one more over in the match and finished with 0 for 22.
"Everyone came to me and said, 'It doesn't matter, it happens. Everyone gets hit. This is your first match, so just enjoy.' Before the next match, I watched a lot more videos of the opposition and planned for each batter."
In the next game against UP Warriorz, Kashvee picked up 1 for 15 from four overs. She had arrived. Against MI, she dismissed Harmanpreet and Amelia Kerr lbw. Against Delhi Capitals, she uprooted Meg Lanning's off stump and had Annabel Sutherland caught behind. In the reverse fixture against RCB, she troubled Mandhana with her swing and yorked Richa Ghosh.
The nerves are no more there - something that is evident from the manner in which she takes a bow, à la Shubman Gill, after taking a wicket. However, her fielding has come under a bit of scrutiny. In the MI game, she misfielded twice in three balls at deep-backward square-leg. On both occasions, the ball went for four.
"It happened because of the dew and lights," Gautam says. "As we hardly get to play day-night matches in domestic cricket, I had no experience of fielding in those conditions."
Gupta concurs. "It was more of a surprise for me than an area for improvement, because Kashvee has always been a good fielder." He is confident we will see a much better version of Gautam the fielder in the coming days. Moreover, compared to the challenges she has overcome so far, this doesn't even qualify as a "down".
*Stats updated till the end of the UP Warriorz vs Mumbai Indians game on March 6