Gautami Naik finds her share of glory after long and bumpy road

Gautami Naik curbed her natural, aggressive instincts to play a memorable innings against Gujarat Giants and become Royal Challengers Bengaluru's latest match-winner

Sruthi Ravindranath

20-Jan-2026 • 2 hrs ago

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) have had a different batting hero in each WPL 2026 game - Nadine de Klerk, Grace Harris, Radha Yadav, Smriti Mandhana - and on Monday, it was an unexpected name that hauled them out of trouble. Gautami Naik, three games into her WPL career, played a measured innings, with RCB two down within the first two overs, to become the first uncapped Indian to hit a fifty in the WPL.

For the most part, though, Naik had been going at around a-run-a-ball, and you wondered why when she played the pick-up shot over deep square-leg. After all, she had the big hits; she had impressed Mandhana with her big-hitting in the Maharashtra Premier League, where they open together for Ratnagiri Jets. In the 2025 season, she hit a 46-ball 70 in a chase of 160 against Raigad Royals, and 31 off ten balls with three sixes and three fours against Solapur Smashers. On Monday, she finished with 73 in 55 balls from No. 4.

Watching from Pune was her long-time coach Avinash Shinde, who has worked with Naik for over a decade and also coached the likes of Kiran Navgire and Poonam Khemnar. He wasn't thinking what we were - what he liked more than the runs was Naik's match awareness.

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"You will eventually see her confidence," Shinde told ESPNcricinfo. "She is someone who can hit from ball one, an imposing player. Today, she stopped herself a little. She has many shots in her game. She played this way because she has to nail her place too."

On a Vadodara pitch where she admitted shot-making wasn't easy, Naik had to curb her hitting instincts. Her innings was punctuated by a series of authoritative strokes that kept the scoreboard ticking. She waited well on length balls to find the gaps through covers, stood tall to punch through extra cover, and wasn't afraid to go aerial, lofting over-pitched deliveries back over the bowler or swinging cleanly over midwicket.

"I think I batted according to the situation," Naik told the broadcasters between innings. "The ball wasn't coming on to the bat well and it was holding a bit. We had to push the game forward too.

"I know we need to back our strengths but I liked the way I played the singles and doubles," she added with a smile.

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Naik's journey to this stage began during a college cricket tournament in 2013, where she filled in for an absent player on a men's team. She caught the attention of Shinde, who was part of the opposition and had just begun coaching women. She faced only a few deliveries before being dismissed, but Shinde asked her to get in touch.

"But she called me only after a year," Shinde said. "She calls me 'sir' now, but earlier she would only call me dada (older brother). She had only been playing cricket with boys, and she was a very different person back then."

But things weren't easy for Naik, Shinde quickly noticed. "When she came to me, she didn't have money for a bat or pads," he said. "But she is a very hard-working girl. She lost her father when she was young, she has seen a lot of ups and downs. Once, she told me she didn't have money for food, and there have been times when she had just had a cup of chai and played."

Tall and lanky, Naik initially seemed to have the perfect build for a fast bowler, and she did start as one. But circumstances changed things.

"For her to become a fast bowler, we didn't even have enough money. Because if you are a fast bowler, then your training has to be advanced and you are also prone to injuries, I don't think we could afford that," Shinde said, adding he too was barely earning at that time. But the transition into being a batter wasn't that difficult.

"Her batting was also very good, but at that time, she only knew how to smash a ball hard and not the technique. She was so raw," he said. "But we worked on it very slowly. We kept adding new shots to her game every few months and focused on the areas she could score in. It's been 12-13 years, we're still working on her batting. It has taken over ten years for her to become the player she is. But she's gone from batting at No. 10 to No. 1 now."

"She [Mandhana] made it easy for me when I came out to bat today. She told me how my shot selection should be on such a wicket. And because of her I was able to get going initially and then hit my shots later"

Gautami Naik

Naik participated in local tournaments, once even scoring a double-hundred in one, She represented Maharashtra Under-23s but found it difficult to break into the senior side. At Shinde and Khemnar's suggestion, she got a spot in the Nagaland domestic team, where she made 228 runs in six games at an average of 45.60 in the Senior Women's One Day tournament in 2021.

The launch of the MPL in 2023 offered a turning point. There was a women's exhibition match held before the men's tournament, and "we worked hard for nine months just for that one match".

In a rain-hit game, she scored 39 off 28, an innings that caught former India wicketkeeper Kiran More's eye. "He [More] was a commentator there. He called Gautami later and said he was impressed by her and asked her why she wasn't playing for Maharashtra."

Naik stayed with Nagaland until 2023, moved to Baroda in 2024, then returned to Maharashtra ahead of the 2025 season, winning the Senior Women's T20 Trophy with them.

"I was enjoying playing cricket and all I wanted was a chance to play, not specifically here or there," Naik, 27, said at the post-match presentation about her domestic career. "I just wanted to play. It has been a long journey."

When RCB picked Naik up for INR 10 lakh at the WPL auction, Shinde was emotional but not entirely surprised as she had impressed them in the trials. But before the trials last year, she had also been called by Mumbai Indians but she had fallen sick at that time.

When she made just nine runs in her second game for RCB this season, Shinde had sent a reassuring message to her: "The team that has won the WPL before is backing her, and she's made it to the XI. It is a big thing. I just asked her to earn Smriti's trust."

On Monday, she did exactly that, as Mandhana guided her through the early stages at the crease.

"She [Mandhana] made it easy for me when I came out to bat today," Naik said. "She told me how my shot selection should be on such a wicket. And because of her I was able to get going initially and then hit my shots later."

As she signed off with the Player-of-the-Match award, Naik dedicated it to those who had brought her to this stage. "This is for Sir [Shinde] and my family," she said. "It's because of them I have achieved this. They have taken so much effort for me."

Sruthi Ravindranath is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo

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