National women’s cricket team captain Harmanpreet Kaur is among the three Indians, along with Nandita Venkatesan and Vinu Daniel, named by TIME magazine as the top 100 emerging leaders shaping the world.
The ‘2023 TIME100 Next: the Emerging Leaders Shaping the World’ list, released on Wednesday, also featured Indian-origin Nabarun Dasgupta.
Underlining that time at the top has not dulled Kaur’s competitive streak, the magazine said the Indian skipper’s “fire and flair have been instrumental in transforming women’s cricket from fringe curiosity to one of the world’s most valuable sporting assets..”
According to a statement from the magazine, Kaur, 34, secured “legendary status back in 2017 when she scored a then-record 171 not out off just 115 balls in a World Cup match against Australia, leaving spectators agog at her extraordinary talent.
It said the cricketer is still making headlines, getting suspended for two matches and fined 75 percent of her match fee in July for criticising umpires during India’s draw against Bangladesh.
In March, Kaur led the Mumbai Indians team to their title in the inaugural edition of the five-team Women’s Premier League (WPL).
Venkatesan, 33, is a tuberculosis survivor who lost her hearing during her bout with a multidrug-resistant version of the disease, a side effect of the toxic cocktail of drugs she took during treatment. She was named on the list, together with Phumeza Tisile, a South African health activist, who too lost her hearing to the disease.
According to the statement, Daniel, who owns a studio, Wallmakers, was quoted as saying that “his best teachers were masons, workers, and locals in Kerala, India.” His studio uses mud and waste as the chief components to make structures that are both utilitarian and alluring, according to its website.
“While a student there, he met his hero Laurie Baker—an architect celebrated for energy-efficient, evocative buildings—who shared Mahatma Gandhi’s advice: the ideal house should be made of materials found within a five-mile radius,” the release said.
Indian-origin scientist Dasgupta helped launch a programme through a nonprofit organization that cleared bottlenecks stopping the opioid-overdose-reversing drug naloxone from getting to the front lines.
“Few Americans have done more to prevent drug–overdose deaths than Nabarun Dasgupta,” the release said.