The extraordinary longevity of Mithali

Mithali Raj on Friday climbed her own summit, becoming the first Indian to complete 10,000 runs in women’s international cricket.

The reference point for India and 10,000 runs in cricket will always be Sunil Gavaskar. He was the first to reach that imposing landmark in any format, in 1987—that achievement then being compared to climbing Mt Everest gave it an added aura.

Mithali Raj. (BCCI)

Mithali Raj on Friday climbed her own summit, becoming the first Indian to complete 10,000 runs in women’s international cricket. Her 36 in the third one-day international against South Africa took her to 10,001, making her only the second in the women’s game to reach the mark. Only England’s Charlotte Edwards is ahead of her, with a career-high 10,273 overall runs.

The 10,000 landmark is a tribute to a player’s longevity and consistency. That is what Raj pointed out, after her achievement was tempered by the Proteas beating India to take a 2-1 series lead.

Charlotte Edwards played for 20 years, but Raj has done one better than that in the longevity stakes, and that by itself is a remarkable statistic.

“When you play for so long, you go through different milestones. And this is just one of them,” Raj told the media after the match. “The key for me has always been consistency. I’ve always believed in scoring runs each time I walk out to bat, whether it’s in domestic or internationals, it never mattered.

“As long as I get an opportunity to bat, it has to be counted, and that has given me a lot of experience and exposure to work on my game over the years, with the changing standards of women’s cricket and to stay relevant on the international circuit.”

Technically sound and a classical cover drive among her favourite shots, Raj and her teammate Jhulan Goswami are the last remaining links to an earlier, more amateur era of women’s cricket, where the game was run in ad-hoc manner and matches were few and far between, and now, with its professional set-up, TV rights, T20 leagues and a stress on fitness.

In between, Raj has inspired multiple generations of women to come into the game, and has captained India with distinction, including taking them to a World Cup final in 2017 where she scored heavily.

Yet, the Indian women’s team going without a game for a year in 2020 during the pandemic phase despite having reached the T20 World Cup final shows a lot more needs to be done.

The Hyderabad-based current women’s ODI skipper has been a flag-bearer for batters in the global game too.

If her ODI debut was marked with a century, Raj truly announced herself on the global stage with a 214 in a Test against England in Taunton in 2002, when the world sat up to take notice of a slight woman with ferocious hitting prowess. It was then the highest Test score in the women’s game.

Yet, India has played only 10 Tests since that debut year in the longest format for Raj. Their last Test was in 2014.

That is why Test runs account for only 663 or her total, to go with her record 6,974 WODI aggregate, far ahead of the any other player—she is the only one to play 200 ODIs and reach 6,000 runs—and 2,364 runs in T20 internationals. Raj, who has stopped playing T20 internationals, will be happy that India and England will play a Test this year.

The base for this extraordinary longevity and consistency was set very early in her life. Raj’s father, a retired Air Force sergeant, was concerned about his daughter’s “laziness”; to work on that, he took an 8-year-old Raj to accompany her older brother in his cricket coaching sessions. Soon, cricket became everything in her life—at 10, Raj, who loved Bharatnatyam, gave up on dance lessons so she could focus simply on the game. Her father ensured she led a regimented life revolving around little else but cricket.

"They didn't give me an idea that there had to be a Plan B,” Raj said in an interview to The Cricket Monthly about her early days. “They trained me like a racehorse. I wasn't allowed to see right or left.”

Neither did she ever look back.