Over the last ten years, women’s cricket in India has been growing at an explosive rate. Smriti Mandhana has demonstrated that there is a worthwhile profession for women in sports, while Mithali Raj opened the door for others. Shafali Verma, 17, has emerged on the international stage as a result of this to illustrate perseverance. Discipline it takes to succeed.
Shafali Verma plays cricket for India. She is an inhabitant of India’s Haryana State, Rohtak. She is the newest female player in a Twenty20 International match for India. Shafali Verma earned her World Twenty20 International debut for India on September 24 against South Africa. Shafali Verma, a female cricket player, was born in Rohtak, Haryana, India, on January 28, 2004. As of 2022, she is 18 years old. Her father and she shared the desire of representing India in cricket.
Her mom is a homemaker, while her father, Sanjeev Verma, is a minor goldsmith. She has a sibling. Shafali Verma was born and raised in Rohtak, Haryana. She draws her cricketing inspiration from Sachin Tendulkar.
Shafali enrolled at the Ram Narain Academy when she was nine years old. She has Ashwini Kumar as a coach. He forced her to interact with young guys. Shafali does have a natural skill and is a strong hard hitter, according to her coach. Her bowling technique is right-arm, off-break and her batting technique is right-handed. Shafali is a batsman who bats first.
Shafali Verma gained national attention during the women’s showcase game that was played following the 2019 IPL. This 15-year-old batted at the top of the order and displayed a commendable performance; everyone was amazed by her assurance and precision in shot choice. Later in the year, in the women’s Twenty20 challenge, Shafali also excelled, and as a consequence. She was chosen for the national squad in the home team’s T20I match against South Africa. Shafali’s biggest gaming asset is her fearlessness, and she may be the perfect replacement for Smriti Mandhana.
Many people are unaware of the fact that Shafali used to have to pretend to be a guy to attend training as a youngster due to the lack of school for girls in Rohtak, where she was raised. The proposal was reluctantly approved by Shafali’s father despite his obvious dread of being discovered. Her aggressive approach to the game as an opener is unquestionably a legacy of Virender Sehwag.
Playing style and the training involved with it:
She is a right-handed batter, like the majority of cricket players in India. She can time the ball brilliantly, though, unlike very few other Indian cricketers. Is renowned for hitting spectacular home runs and for seeing the spaces between fielders. Shafali’s wrist flips to smash a six-over long-on is one of his hallmark shots. Shafali Verma can undoubtedly strike the ball with such ease; it is not often you see someone do so.
She also enjoys playing the “pull shot,” which she mastered with practice. She works out like any other cricketer, but she also concentrates on particular deliveries.
To keep things in perspective, being a bouncer is very taxing on one’s thighs and back. Shafali, on the other hand, was always driven to improve every shot she made. She could not, for instance, play the ball as effectively as she can now. It took her a few weeks to learn how to hit the ball onto the ground instead of in the air while she was enrolled at the Ram Narain academy. She is one of the few female cricketers playing today who can smash the ball so well across the cover area.
Considering that she was groomed as an aggressive opening batter. Shafali also struggled with batting on the back foot as she was frequently required to do so. But as Shafali improved her strategy, she discovered that being the underdog had advantages of its own. You can effectively block in-swinging balls with this tactic, and it also works well against spinners. Shafali gradually came to understand the importance of knowing when to strike the ball and how to defend against it. To practice batting on the back foot, she started competing against Ranji bowlers. Shafali Verma has developed into the next great thing in women’s cricket because of her unrelenting pursuit of excellence.
Way to glorify future opportunities:
By 2017, everyone in Haryana was aware of Shafali Verma’s skills and the potential that everyone knew she possessed. As a result, Shafali gained notoriety in 2019 at the age of fifteen after scoring 128 runs off just 56 deliveries for Haryana versus Nagaland in a women’s domestic cricket live score India in T20.
She eventually won the Women’s T20 Challenge Cup thanks to this knock.
Verma continued to dazzle as she was subsequently chosen for the coveted Indian National Women’s T20I team. However, the 15-year-old had a firsthand experience of what playing cricket at the highest level is like when she was removed for just a duck in her first game.
But this paled in comparison to what she accomplished in the fifth T20 when she broke Sachin Tendulkar’s record. They Decame the nation’s youngest player to make a half-century (15 years, 285 days), beating the previous mark of 16 years, 214 days. However, Verma set other records on that day as well. The combination between Shafali and Smriti Mandhana throughout the innings was 143 runs. The greatest total for our country in Women’s T20Is.
Here are a few of her professional accomplishments: –
- Shafali was chosen for India’s Women’s Twenty20 International (WT20I) team for the tournament against South Africa in September 2019. On September 24, 2019, against South Africa, she made her World Twenty20 debut for India.
- She was the newest player for our country in a T20 international match. In November 2019 against the Windies, she made cricket history by being the nation’s youngest player to reach the half-century mark. She amassed 158 runs in five games against the Windies and was named “Player of the Series.”
- Shafali received a central contract with the BCCI in January 2020 after being picked for India’s team for the ICC Women’s T-20 World Cup 2022 in Australia.
As a result, Shafali Verma was named the No. 1 T20 hitter, a distinction that only a select few cricketers ever attain. Given that she already held this position just at age of seventeen, the Rohtak girl may be a major force in the development of women’s cricket in India. Verma has smashed more sixes in Twenty-20 innings than any other women’s cricket player within 21 months following her international debut, helping lead India to their first Twenty20 World Cup final, and has also twice headed the Women’s Twenty20 batting rankings.
