While the Indian skipper Virat Kohli and teammate Rohit Sharma retain the capability of demolishing the best bowling attack in the world, there’s another cricketer who has outdone both of them when it comes to scoring runs in T20 Internationals.
It’s Mithali Raj who is currently proving to be the mainstay of the Indian batting in the ongoing women’s T20 World Cup with back to back innings in the tournament surpassing Sharma and Kohli to be the highest run scorer for India in the format.
The 36-year-old former captain of India’s women cricket team has so far scored 2283 runs in 80 T20 international innings, averaging an impressive 37.
She is also the all-time leading run-scorer for India in all formats of cricket. Due to her batting prowess, Raj has earned the moniker ‘Tendulkar of India’s women’s cricket’.
Other cricketers in the illustrious list of the most prolific run scorers for India in T20 internationals are former Indian captain MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina and captain of India’s women’s team, Harmanpreet Kaur.
Raj was named among the probables for the 1997 Women's Cricket World Cup at the age of 14, but couldn't make it to the final squad. She made her One Day International debut in 1999 against Ireland and scored unbeaten 114 runs.
In July 2017, she became the first player to score 6,000 runs in women’s ODIs. She led the Indian team to the final of the 2017 Women's Cricket World Cup where the team lost to England by nine runs.
She has scored 17 half centuries in her T20 international career, two of those coming in the last two matches against Ireland and Pakistan in the ongoing T20 World Cup.
All these staggering achievements when the sport wasn’t her first career choice.
“Cricket was never my first choice. I never wanted to be a sportsperson. It just happened. It was destiny. Initially, I was into dance and learnt Bharatnatyam for eight years. I appeared on various TV shows. Cricket happened because my father (Dorai Raj) is an ex-Serviceman and my brother was a cricketer,” she recently told Mid Day newspaper.
