Mithali Raj retires: End of an era

India cricket legend Mithali Raj announced her retirement from international cricket and it was the end of an era. For me as a journalist too.

My writings on women’s cricket began with Mithali. Hers was the first name I knew. My understanding of the game grew along with conversations I had with her, when she was kind enough to share her time and her reading of the sport.

So writing about Mithali was a chance to get nostalgic, while also looking at how the canvas of women’s sport is expanding. Here are two pieces:

For FirstPost: A reluctant cricketer who built a sport and became the best

Mithali Raj didn’t set out to be a cricketer. As a young girl, she just wanted to sleep in. And maybe get decked up and do Bharatanatyam dance. Cricket was her father’s dream. She played, she said, out of a sense of loyalty and duty. But so prodigious was her early talent that cricket became her destiny – one whose blessing and burden she carried with trademark grace for over two decades.

Raj didn’t set out to be a changemaker either. She didn’t aim to be an inspiration for generations of cricketers or a face who graces the cover of Vogue magazine. Give her a book and a quiet corner any day. Once upon a time, she used to be too shy to even raise her bat after a century; there was, after all, the next match, the next training session to get ready for.

For News9: Anonymous to showstopper, Mithali Raj’s legacy transcends cricketing boundaries

“People relate more to my name than my face,” Mithali Raj, former India captain and record-breaking batter, once said matter-of-factly. “If I am not introduced as Mithali Raj, I would just pass off as someone on the street.” … At best, the name was accompanied by a photo of a woman in a floppy hat, playing a cover drive, or maybe holding a trophy with her quiet dimpled smile. Raj was right: At one time, hers was perhaps one of the handful of names – if not the only one – of women cricketers that Indians knew.

Speaking of nostaligia, this video from 2017 I shot while working with Sidhanta Patnaik remains one of the bits of work I’m proudest about: Probably the only video out there where one of the best batters in the world breaks down her game.

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