Indian women’s ODI cricket team captain Mithali Raj has recently shared some of her stories to rise as a cricketer. She has revealed that her mother wanted to see her as a dancer.
The 35-year-old Mithali Raj is the ODI captain of Indian women’s cricket team. Making her international cricket debut in 1999, the right-handed top-order batswoman has played 10 Tests, 194 ODIs and 77 T20Is where she has scored 663 runs, 6,373 runs and 2,123 runs respectively. She has also taken eight wickets and all of these wickets came from the ODI cricket.
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Raj is the most runs scorer in women’s ODI history as she is the only batswoman to score 6,000 or more ODI runs. In women’s T20I cricket, Raj is the fifth most runs scorer and only Indian batswoman to score 2,000 or more T20I runs.
Under her captaincy, India women’s cricket team has become runners-up for twice in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup (2005 and 2017).
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Recently, in the ‘Breakfast with Champions’ show, Mithali Raj revealed some of her inside stories.
Talking about her early stage before taking the cricket, Raj said, “My mom wanted me to be a dancer. I started to dance much before I got into cricket, it was more of my choice, I wanted to be a dance. I enjoyed dancing and then cricket happened because of various reason.”
Mithali also revealed that she has come from the non-sport family and her family faced a lot of trouble during her cricketing journey but always protected her.
Raj said, “From a Tamil family cricket was nowhere. Nobody played sport in my family. For my grandparents to accept that I was playing cricket that too with boys, go early in the morning and come back in the evening, got all tanned. I also have a couple of stitches on my face, they were like no one is going to marry her, she has cuts all over the face.
“My dad and my mom were like enemies. But my parents have cocooned me from everything. If I had to deal with it as a youngster I wouldn’t have been as strong as I’ve turned out to be.”
