The right-hander made her international debut aged 15 and last November broke Sachin Tendulkar’s record as India’s youngest half-centurion
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| Shafali Verma |
Refusing to give up, her father, instead turned to the myriad boys’ set-ups in Rohtak. “I literally begged them to give her a chance, but in vain,” he told the Times of India. “All I got was rejection. I decided to cut her hair, and took her to one of the academies and got her enrolled there as a boy.” Although she ultimately flourished under instruction, she struggled initially facing pace bowling but was resolute about continuing despite being struck several times on the helmet. On one occasion she impersonated her brother who had fallen ill on the eve of an under-12 tournament and, when pretending to be him, won the ‘man’ of the series award.
Criticism from neighbours and relatives who insulted her father for letting a girl play the game and months of financial hardship after Sanjeev was diddled out of his savings by a con man did not sabotage her progress. She made it into the state side at 14, smashed a buccaneering 128 off 56 balls in one match and was drafted in the IPL Velocity squad for the 2019 Women’s T20 Challenge.
In 2013 she had been present at Sachin Tendulkar’s final first-class game for Mumbai and met her hero and the man whose record she took for the first time in Melbourne last month. “The reason I took up this game was because of Sachin sir,” she wrote. “My whole family has not just idolised him but literally worshipped him.
