India Post has joined the nation in celebrating the Indian women’s cricket team’s historic victory in the ICC Women’s World Cup 2025. The West Bengal circle has released a special cover saluting the success.

The cancellation has a graphic design of the Cup at the centre, surrounded by a circular frame, which is stamped on a specially designed envelope featuring a team photo with the trophy. Dated November 3, the day after the victory, the special cover was released by Ashok Kumar, chief postmaster general, West Bengal circle and other senior officers. A total of 1,000 such special covers have been issued, priced at ₹25.

This is one of at least four postal initiatives taken across the country, with the Indore GPO also issuing a special cover. Mumbai, where the final was held, has issued a special cancellation — the postmark created for the event minus the envelope. So has Raipur. A special cancellation can be serviced for a stipulated time period while a special cover is limited to the day of release and is not stamped later on request.

“This is a momentous occasion which we wanted to showcase. We have done so twice in the recent past to salute our men’s cricket team and wanted to do the same for our women as well,” said Supriyo Ghosh, post master general, mail and business development.

“It was rare to mark cricketing achievements through postal releases in the last century except for a stamp on the historic overseas wins in England and the West Indies in 1971,” a veteran philatelic dealer said. After India’s World Cup victory in 1983 only a special cover come out, that too the next year, in April, from Vadodara.

India’s next world cup triumph, acing the T20 showdown against arch-rivals Pakistan in 2007, was marked by a special cover combining successes that year in cricket, hockey and chess, released at the Uttar Pradesh philatelic exhibition, but its cancellation was cricket-specific.

Tournament wins have been toasted widely in recent times, even in retrospect. In 2008, the Lord’s reunion of Kapil Dev’s team was toasted in London with a silver jubilee special cover with a cancellation of the logo of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The 40th anniversary, in 2023, saw a flurry of special cancellations across Karnataka with the design featuring the Prudential World Cup — from Bengaluru, Mysore, Belagavi and Mangalore.

In contrast to the lukewarm philatelic reception to the 1983 event, India’s recent cricket successes have seen multiple postal releases. The West Bengal circle itself brought out special covers both after the T20 World Cup in 2024 and the Champion’s Trophy in March 2025. The latter triggered cancellations with separate designs from Raipur, Mumbai, Srinagar and Gandhinagar, among others. New Delhi had a special cover on the T20 World Cup victory while Mumbai released a special cancellation.

However, there have not been any commemorative stamps on tournament wins. The 1971 issue was for Test victories. “Though countries like Pakistan, England and some West Indian islands have brought out stamps on World Cup wins, it is risky to plan ahead. Sri Lanka had kept a set of four stamps designed and ready to be printed when it reached the World Cup final in 2007. But they lost, leading to the release getting scrapped. Instead, a first-day cover on the runner-up team was published. But some proof copies of the unreleased stamp designs got smuggled out and became collectors’ items,” the dealer said.

Asked about the possibility of a commemorative stamp coming out, departmental sources in Delhi pointed out that they were issued to mark milestones of a longer span like a golden jubilee or a centenary. “Those little pieces of paper represent a mark of eternity and a long legacy. Special covers are more spontaneous issues,” an official said.