Shafali Verma, the youngster of Indian women’s cricket, made headlines on Saturday (November 10) when she became the youngest Indian to score an international half-century, breaking a 30-year old record of batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar. Shafali was only in the fifth match of her international career and broken a record held by her idol.

India went 2-0 up in the five-match T20I series where Shafali scored two consecutive fifties. Although she has made headlines in her second international outing, scoring 46 off just 33 balls against South Africa. However, she shared her earlier struggle days and also develop her hard-hitting style.

“It was a struggle initially, playing against the boys. I often got hit in the helmet. On a few occasions, they even smashed my helmet grille. But there was no question of giving up,” she had told Reuters. “They never treated me with kid gloves because I’m a girl. And I always tried to give it back to them. Guess that’s how I developed my hard-hitting batting style.”

Her coach Ashwani Kumar recalls how she used to hit big.

Read here: Losing Wickets Quickly Cost Us 3rd T20I, Says Mahmudullah

”She was just nine when she came to our Ram Narain Academy and the girls were no match for her. So I started playing her with the U-19 boys. She used to take the U-19 bowlers to the cleaners,” Kumar told the Times of India.

”I was lucky to have an upbringing that’s so different from most girls of my age. Many scoffed at the idea of a girl playing an outdoor sport with boys, but dad was adamant,” Shafali Verma told Reuters of her father. ”Despite the discouragement, dad gave me everything that he would give to my elder brother. Even after I started playing, people said girls have no future in cricket. But dad shielded me from any cynicism and asked me to focus on cricket only.”

With this knocks, it is not far away that she will play the next big tournament, that is ICC World T20 earlier next year.