15-year-old Shafali Verma breaks Sachin Tendulkar’s 30-year record
Indian opener Shafali Verma has broken Sachin Tendulkar’s record of being the youngest Indian to score a 50 in international cricket. At 15 years and 285 days, she scored her maiden fifty against West Indies in the first T20I.
Teenage cricket sensation Shafali Verma became the youngest Indian cricketer to score a half-century in an international match. She smashed 73 off 49 balls in the first T20 International against West Indies.
She was 15 years and 285 days old when she broke the 30-year old record set by Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin was 16 years and 214 days when he scored his maiden half century. She also became the second youngest player - man or woman - to score a half-century in T20Is.
Playing only her fifth international match, her maiden fifty included six fours and four sixes. Her blazing knock helped team India secure a convincing 84-run win at the Daren Sammy National Cricket Stadium.
“If you saw the match, you noticed she milked ones and twos and was rotating the strike. At such a tender age, she doesn’t feel the nerves, she was calm and calculated. She is a natural talent, just like Sachin was,” said Ashwani Kumar, her coach at the academy in Rohtak.
Her attacking style of batting was not restricted to just the first match. In the second T20I, she scored her second successive half-century. She batted exceptionally to score 69 off just 35 deliveries. In both the matches, Shafali and Smriti Mandhana shared a hundred-plus run partnership. The 143-run opening stand between the two in the second T20 was India’s highest partnership in women’s T20Is.
The youngster who was picked in the side after Mithali’s retirement from the format has made rapid strides. Known for her hard-hitting prowess, she was specially picked for the shortest format of the game. The Rohtak-born batter has already completed three seasons with her state team, Haryana. It was in the domestic under-19 and senior state tournaments that she proved her mettle. She was accelerated to the national side on the back of her run-amassing domestic season in 2018-19. In her third season with Haryana, she accumulated 1,923 runs, including six hundreds and three half-centuries.
Mithali Raj and England batswoman Danielle Wyatt have praised the cricketer with the latter calling her ‘a superstar in the making’. Shafali was part of the Velocity team in the 2019 Women’s IPL where she opened the innings with Danielle and took on the international bowlers without fear.
(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)