MUMBAI: The Indian women’s cricket team may have suffered an early exit from the 2026 Women’s T20 World Cup, but India still has representation in the biggest match of the tournament – and in historic fashion.Vrinda Rathi, who hails from Nerul in Navi Mumbai, has been appointed by the International Cricket Council (ICC) as one of the on-field umpires for the Women’s T20 World Cup final between hosts England and Australia at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground on Sunday. She will officiate with Jacqueline Williams.Rathi’s appointment marks an important milestone as she becomes the first Indian woman umpire to officiate in a Women’s World Cup final. He is also only the second Indian umpire to stand in an ICC World Cup final after Ram Babu Gupta, who officiated in the 1987 Men’s World Cup final at Eden Gardens alongside Pakistan’s Mahboob Shah. Match umpire GS Lakshmi, meanwhile, officiated in the finals of the 2023 and 2024 Women’s T20 World Cup.The 37-year-old Rathi has built an impressive officiating career, having featured in 20 Women’s One Day Internationals, 77 Women’s T20 Internationals and one Women’s Test match.“She is a good, hard-working umpire. She is among the top umpires in the ICC panel in the women’s game. She was a scorer originally. So, she became an umpire at my insistence. “You can have a career in umpiring,” I said. In 2014, Rathi cleared the umpires’ examination of the umpires, the Mumbai Association, the Cricket Association spent four years. examination of umpiring conducted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (in 2018). Within a year (in 2020), she, along with Narayanan Janani, have been promoted to the ICC Development Panel of Umpires,” Ganesh Iyer, ex-BCCI umpire and ex-chairman of the Mumbai Cricket Association’s umpires committee, told TOI.Before taking up umpiring, Rathi was a medium-pacer and represented the Mumbai University women’s team for four years, though she was unable to break into the Mumbai senior women’s team.Rathi created history in December 2023 when she became the first Indian woman to officiate in a women’s Test match, standing in the one-off Test between India and England at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai.His rise through the officer ranks was rapid. In 2022, he officiated at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. On 10 January 2023, she, along with Janani Narayanan, became one of the first women to be on-field umpires in a men’s domestic match in India, officiating the Ranji Trophy between Goa and Pondicherry.In 2023, Rathi also officiated at the Women’s T20 World Cup in South Africa, was in the final of the inaugural Women’s Premier League and was part of the officiating panel at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China.