Mithali Raj is an avid reader, and other little known facts about the ‘Lady Tendulkar of Indian women's cricket’
Did you know that to calm her jitters, ace cricketer Mithali Raj reads before setting off to bat ? Here are six more facts about the Indian Women's Captain for Test and ODI.
Mithali Raj is easily one of the most sought after role models for girls who want to be champions in their chosen sport. The Test and ODI captain of Indian Women's Cricket team has broken many barriers with awards like Padma Shri and Arjuna Award to her name.
As she leads the Indian women's Cricket team in their first Test in seven years, there is much to look forward to. Here's listing seven interesting and little known facts about the pioneering woman -
1) Mithali Raj is an avid reader and often turns to books, especially before batting, to calm her jitters. She has been spotted reading 13th century Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi before setting off for a match during ICC Women’s World Cup -- moments before scoring 71 runs and becoming the first woman to score seven consecutive half-centuries in one-day international cricket.
2) The ace cricketer calls out gender bias and sexist behaviour when she sees it. Case in point, the press interaction during the 2017 World Cup when she was asked to name her favourite men's cricketer. Her prompt rebuttal, “Would you ask a male character that? Do you ask them who their favourite female cricketer is?" won the hearts of netizens.
3) Mithali Raj once dominated the Twitter emoji leaderboard. During the 2017 World Cup, Twitter introduced custom emojis team captains which were to be unlocked by users, and Indian captain Mithali topped the chart.
4) Mithali was 16 years and 250 days old when she made her ODI debut on 26 June, 1999. She became the youngest player ever to score a hundred across formats.
5) In March 2021, she became the first Indian woman cricketer to score 10,000 international runs.
6) Daughter of Dorai Raj, a warrant officer at Indian Air Force, she started playing cricket at age of 10.
7) Mithali may be winning hearts in the world of cricket today but her first love was the dance form Bharatnatyam. During second standard, Mithali got herself enrolled for dancing classes at school and even today, she believes that the moves she learnt from Bharatnatyam training and technical skills as a cricketer have both shaped her game on the field.
Edited by Anju Narayanan
