Mithali Raj reaches batting pinnacle in women's cricket

Hyderabad: Indian captain Mithali Raj reached the batting pinnacle in women’s cricket as she took her ODI run aggregate to 6,028. She has had to do a lot of running about over 18 years of international cricket though.

The 34-year-old who took to the game when she was only 10, at a camp run by her father Dorai at Keyes High School in Secunderabad, has had to soak in several downs before battling her way to the top.

On Wednesday, an emotional Dorai recounted Mithali’s struggles on and off the cricket field. “She has worked really hard to get to this position... puts in the hard yards at training sessions and just does not want to stop. She is mad about cricket! Deccan Chronicle was the first newspaper to write about her potential to reach great heights early in her career,” he told this newspaper on Wednesday after Mithali slammed 69 in a World Cup match against Australia at Bristol in England to get past Englishwoman Charlotte Edwards’s total of 5,992 ODI runs.

Women cricketers had been on a sticky wicket until 2006, when the cash-rich BCCI took control of the women’s game in the country and facilitated better grounds, improved transport and funding. “Mithali has pushed her playing kit in a cart, travelled unreserved in trains and put up in dingy rooms while on cricket tours,” Dorai said.

“Mithali was a standby for India’s 1997 World Cup squad. At a preparatory camp in Calcutta, all the girls were put up in one huge room at an educational institution. All of a sudden, the last date for the camp was announced and all the senior girls left for Delhi to play a benefit match for Diana Edulji (former India captain and current member of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators of the BCCI). Mithali, just 14, was alone on that five-acre campus with just the Warden as her guardian. The warden would tell me that she kept to herself and was reluctant to interact much. It would be two days before I could get to Calcutta by train, which was delayed by four hours as well. When I reached the place, at 10 pm in heavy downpour, Mithali hugged me and cried for half-an-hour! I cannot forget the tears she shed that night,” Dorai said.

He went on to narrate another painful episode. “In 2002 the Indian team was asked to report at the Nehru Stadium in Delhi for a camp that preceded a tour to England. We came to know of this at short notice and could not get reservation on the train. To our luck, at the Nampally station, a former boxer was the TTE who was kind and offered his seat to accommodate Mithali in the reserved compartment. However, he got off duty at Nagpur and the official who replaced him asked her to get off the compartment along with her huge kitbag! Then, a Sikh gentleman who was noticing all this, asked Mithali to share the berth with his daughter who was about the same age,” Dorai recalled.

It was a different ordeal in Delhi. “Upon reaching the Nehru Stadium, she discovered that there was no room available for her as she had arrived two days ahead. She made a call to me from the street and began to sob. She soon had company though as another cricketer too had reached the place the same day.

They then managed to accommodate the two girls after quite a wait,” Dorai explained. For Mithali, all those runs have counted.