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Biography & Career Overview
The short version: Radha Prakash Yadav (born 21 April 2000) is an Indian women's cricketer who bowls slow left-arm orthodox spin and bats in the middle order. She represented India in 55 Women's Twenty20 Internationals, took part in the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup final win over South Africa, and was in the squad that retained India's Asian Games cricket gold at Aichi-Nagoya in September 2026. She grew up in a house of about 225 square feet behind her father's vegetable stall in Kandivali, west Mumbai, in a family whose ancestral district is Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh. This profile sets out the documented record, the parts of it that sources dispute, and what is not on the record at all.
Early Life: A Vegetable Stall in Kandivali
Yadav was born prematurely on 21 April 2000. Mid Day reported on 25 March 2018 that she was born in Kandivali (West) in Mumbai and that the family lived in a 225 sq. ft. house behind her father's vegetable stall. Her father, Omprakash Yadav, is originally from Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh. Speaking to ESPNcricinfo for a feature published on 19 February 2020, when he was fifty-five, he credited all three of her older siblings with a part in her growth, not only himself and his wife. No source consulted here publishes the name of her mother or of any of the three siblings, so this profile prints none of them.
Sources disagree about the town of her birth, and this archive reports the disagreement instead of settling it. English Wikipedia gives Kandivali, Mumbai, on the strength of the Mid Day profile. Hindi Wikipedia's opening line gives Jaunpur. Both agree on the family's Jaunpur origin, and Hindi dailies have reported on the celebrations in the district since: Dainik Bhaskar covered the mood in her ancestral village in Mariahu tehsil after the 2025 World Cup win, on 3 November 2025, and News18 Hindi ran the same Jaunpur angle on 11 November 2025.
Cricket started in the housing society compound, where she played with boys. Her first coach, Prafful Naik, noticed her there and has worked with her since she was twelve. He moved her from Anandibai Damodar Kale Vidyalaya to Our Lady of Remedy School in Kandivali in 2013 so that she could train under him, and she later attended Vidya Kunj School. When he took up work in Vadodara, she followed him there, as The Times of India reported. That single decision shapes the rest of the record: she came through Baroda women's cricket rather than Mumbai's, while still representing Mumbai at first.
Domestic Debut at Fifteen
Yadav made her debut in major domestic cricket on 10 January 2015 for Mumbai against Kerala. She was fourteen at the time, weeks short of fifteen. She has played for Mumbai, Baroda and West Zone. Her domestic career spans four formats: she has appeared in first-class, List A and Women's Twenty20 cricket, and she was named in India's squad for the one-off Women's Test against England in 2021, the format India had last played in 2014.
Her club and franchise record is unusually long for her age. Mumbai in 2014/15, Baroda from 2015/16, the IPL Supernovas in 2019 and 2020, IPL Velocity in 2022, then the Sydney Sixers in the 2021/22 Women's Big Bash League. In the Women's Premier League she was bought by Delhi Capitals at her base price of ₹40 lakh at the 2023 auction, reported by Jagran on 14 February 2023. Delhi kept her: Firstpost listed her in the Capitals' retention list on 7 November 2024, and NDTV carries her among Delhi's retained bowlers for that season. At the next auction she changed cities. ESPNcricinfo's live page for the WPL 2026 auction records Radha Yadav to Royal Challengers Bengaluru at ₹65 lakh on 26 November 2025, and Business Standard confirmed Bengaluru's full list of buys the next morning, describing a spin department bolstered by her at ₹65 lakh.
With RCB she made her first fifty in the Women's Premier League on 16 January 2026 against the Gujarat Giants, in a match India Today reported as a 32-run win built on Shreyanka Patil's five-wicket haul, and ESPNcricinfo wrote the same day that batting at number five is not unfamiliar ground for her. The ₹65 lakh contract is the largest sum on her public earnings record and supersedes the ₹40 lakh figure this profile carried until October 2026.
International Career: A Debut at Seventeen and a World Cup at Twenty-Five
She made her Women's Twenty20 International debut against South Africa on 13 February 2018, aged seventeen, and India named her in its squad for the 2018 ICC Women's World Twenty20 in the West Indies that October. She finished that tournament as India's joint-leading wicket-taker with eight dismissals in five matches.
She was selected for the 2020 ICC Women's T20 World Cup in Australia, where India reached the final and finished runner-up. Her Women's One Day International debut followed on 14 March 2021 against South Africa in Lucknow, in the fourth match of a home series; she holds India's ODI cap number 129. She was also in the India squad for the one-off Women's Test against England, which the BCCI announced on 14 May 2021 and which was played at Bristol from 15 to 18 June 2021, The Hindu calling that return to the format the end of a seven-year wait. She is recorded here as a squad member, not a player in the match, because the published scorecard summaries checked for this revision do not list her among the players engaged.
On 9 November 2020, in the final of the Women's T20 Challenge between Trailblazers and Supernovas, she became the first player to take a five-wicket haul in that tournament. It remains the clearest single performance of her white-ball bowling career, and it came in a competition that the BCCI later discontinued.
Her Twenty20 international record, as carried in her Wikipedia infobox from ESPNcricinfo data, is 55 matches, 62 wickets at an average of 19.79, best bowling of 4 for 23, 67 runs at a batting average of 5.58 with a top score of 14, and 16 catches. Her One Day International record is a single match, in which she bowled 58 deliveries without a wicket. Those totals are as of the infobox date printed on the article and have not been re-derived here from scorecards; they also pre-date her appearances in the June 2026 World Cup set out below, so the international tally is one a reader should expect to move in both match and wicket counts.
The Trophy Years: 2025 World Cup and 2026 Asian Games Gold
India reached the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup final against South Africa at Navi Mumbai on 2 November 2025 and won the title for the first time. Yadav was in the squad for that match, which is also recorded as her most recent One Day International. India's 2026 Women's T20 World Cup squad, announced in India's home season, included her after a period outside the team; Hindustan Times reported the selection on 2 May 2026 alongside the injury withdrawal of Kashvee Gautam.
She played in that tournament, contested in June 2026. In the warm-up against the West Indies on 8 June 2026, ESPNcricinfo recorded her three for 25 in a twenty-six-run win, and in the group match against Bangladesh on 25 June 2026 the match report carried by Olympics.com put her 3 for 28 alongside Shafali Verma's fifty in an India victory. India also lost a group match to South Africa by six wickets on 21 June 2026, when BBC Sport reported Marizanne Kapp's 81 as the difference. Because the aggregate totals above depend on when that infobox was last refreshed, this profile publishes the dated performances and leaves the career aggregate with its as-of caveat instead of guessing at a new number.
In September 2026 she was part of the India squad for cricket at the Asian Games, announced by the BCCI on 30 June 2026. The women's event ran from 17 to 22 September 2026 at Kōrogi Sports Park in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, as a straight knockout over eight teams in Twenty20 format. India beat Sri Lanka by 147 runs in the gold-medal match on 22 September 2026, as reported by the Indian Express, to retain the title India had won at the previous edition of the Games.
Across that run her medal record, as listed on her Wikipedia article, covers the 2025 World Cup title, the 2026 Asian Games gold, Commonwealth Games silver at Birmingham 2022, the 2020 T20 World Cup runner-up finish, and Women's Twenty20 Asia Cup titles in 2022 and 2026 with a runner-up place in 2024.
The 2025 win also brought a state honour, and here the sources disagree on the number. The Hindu reported on 4 November 2025 that the Maharashtra government would give ₹2.25 crore each to the state's three world champions (Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues and Radha Yadav) and India Today recorded the felicitation on 7 November 2025 at the same figure. The post published by the chief minister describing the ceremony instead gives ₹2.5 crore. This profile follows the two news reports and prints the disagreement rather than choosing silently; the award is a one-time state honour, not a contract or an income, so it is listed under honours and is never used in the earnings line.
Playing Profile
Yadav bats right-handed and bowls slow left-arm orthodox spin, and is listed as a bowling all-rounder. Her role in India's side has been a fourth or fifth bowling option who can hold a death overs line, and her selection history tracks the Indian team's preference for two spin options in home conditions. Her best bowling in Twenty20 internationals is 4 for 23.
The Jaunpur and Mumbai Question
Two places claim her, and the sourcing explains why. Mumbai is where she was raised, where her father's stall stood, where her first coach found her in a society compound, and where she made her domestic debut for Mumbai. Jaunpur is where the family comes from, and Uttar Pradesh's Hindi press has treated her as one of its own since 2021, when News18 Hindi grouped her with Shikha Pandey as "Jaunpur's daughters" for the T20 World Cup squad. Migrant families from eastern Uttar Pradesh are a large and documented part of Mumbai's working population, and both framings are accurate descriptions of different things. This profile keeps both.
Why She Matters to This Archive
Yadav is the first Indian women's cricketer this site profiles in full, and she extends the archive's cricket record from the batting of Suryakumar Yadav and the spin of Kuldeep Yadav into the women's game, which this archive had previously covered only in passing. Her route is also the one the site documents repeatedly in other names: a public-school compound, one coach who moved cities for a talented child, and a domestic system that took her at fourteen. The pace bowlers in this archive, Umesh Yadav, Mayank Yadav and Mangesh Yadav, came through Indian cricket's fast-bowl pipeline; she came through its spin pipeline, which is a different and less reported path. On the community question that makes the surname itself a research topic, the origins of the Yadav community and the notable Yadav personalities guide give the documented backdrop. What this site does not claim for her is a community verification: no source consulted here states Yadav as her recorded caste, and the archive includes her on the strength of the surname, the documented family origin in Jaunpur, and her public record.
How This Profile Was Verified
Every dated fact above is traceable to a named outlet. The childhood details, the 225 sq. ft. house, the vegetable stall, coach Prafful Naik and the school moves come from Mid Day on 25 March 2018 and from The Times of India's Vadodara report. Debut dates, cap numbers, squad inclusions and the international figures follow the ESPNcricinfo-derived record carried in her English Wikipedia article, with Hindi Wikipedia used for the full name Radha Prakash Yadav and for the competing birthplace. Franchise moves were cross-checked against BCCI and ICC announcements and against the WPL auction report carried by Jagran on 14 February 2023. The 2025 World Cup final rests on BBC Sport's live report of 2 November 2025, the Asian Games result on the Indian Express report of 22 September 2026 and the tournament article's citation of the BCCI squad announcement of 30 June 2026. The franchise record was rebuilt in October 2026 from the retention lists published by Firstpost and NDTV in November 2024 and from ESPNcricinfo's and Business Standard's reporting of the WPL 2026 auction in November 2025: an earlier version of this page said she had moved to Royal Challengers Bengaluru for the 2025 season, which was wrong, and the current text states the 2025 retention and the 2026 transfer separately. The June 2026 World Cup performances rest on ESPNcricinfo's warm-up report, the Olympics.com match report and BBC Sport, and the 2021 Test squad on the BCCI announcement and The Hindu's preview. The family detail comes from ESPNcricinfo's feature of 19 February 2020, and the state award from The Hindu and India Today, with the chief minister's post kept in the source list as the conflicting account. ESPNcricinfo returns an error to automated requests, so its auction, match and feature pages are used here from the summaries returned by search, and not re-read in full, and its career totals reach this article through Wikipedia. ESPNcricinfo returns an error to automated requests, so its figures are used here as reproduced by Wikipedia and were not independently re-derived from the site, which is the weakest link in this piece and the reason the international totals carry an as-of date. Where any figure here disagrees with a published scorecard, the corrections policy explains how to have it fixed, normally inside 72 hours.