A batting colossal – Timeline of Mithali Raj’s legendary career
Former Indian skipper and legendary batter Mithali Raj brought curtains down on her illustrious cricketing career on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. She was last seen in action during the Indian eves’ final Women’s World Cup 2022 group fixture against South Africa on March 27. Mithali was one of the pioneers in women’s cricket having led India to two Women’s World Cup finals in the 2005 and 2017 editions.
Here’s a look at the timeline of her legendary career:
Raj made her presence felt immediately on her ODI debut scoring an unbeaten 114 in June 1999. More importantly, she was involved in a then record-breaking 258-run opening stand with Reshma Gandhi, against Ireland. The batting megastar then went on to make her Test debut against England in January 2022. In August that year, she went on to register her maiden Test double century against England in Taunton.
The Rajasthan-born cricketer led India to their maiden Women’s World Cup final in the 2005 edition in South Africa where they lost to Australia. A year later, Raj captained India on her T20I debut as India registered a comfortable eight-wicket win over England.
Fast forward to 2008, the Railways cricketer scored a spectacular 66 in the Asia Cup final against Sri Lanka where the Women in Blue came out on top by a mammoth 177 runs. Thus, India won their fourth consecutive Asia Cup title.
In August 2014, an inexperienced Indian team under Raj’s captaincy registered a historic win in the one-off Test match against England at Wormsley. What made the occasion more special was that this was India’s first Test match after more than eight years.
Raj was then conferred with the prestigious Padma Shri Award in 2015. Under her guidance, India registered their maiden bilateral series victory on Australian soil by winning the three-match T20Is 2-1.
Under her, India were so near from being crowned the world champions in the 2017 Women’s World Cup as a middle-order collapse saw them fall short by 10 runs at Lord’s.
As far as her batting excellence is concerned, Raj is the highest run-scorer in WODIs with 7805 runs to her name, has registered 50-plus scores a record 71 times, is the only cricketer to score over 10,500 runs in women’s cricket (10,868) and is also the only player to feature in six editions of the Women’s World Cup (2000-2022).
Two other unique achievements of Raj include being the youngest batter to score a century in ODIs (aged 16 years and 205 days( and the longest international cricketing career in women’s cricket, at 22 years and 274 days.
