Under the SKanner: Mithali Raj

If Indian women’s cricket is where it is today, a huge part of the credit should go to the Indian captain Mithali Raj. She led the team for the longest time as the captain besides also being the highest run-getter in women’s cricket.

Calm in tense situations and gracious in defeat, Raj has been the impetus behind the team’s success for some time now. In fact, besides being a great leader, she along with Jhulan Goswami has been the standout performer for the team even in the World Cup.

As two veterans of the Indian team might even bow out without the much coveted World Cup trophy to their names, it is time to celebrate their contributions to the team and the legacy they will be leaving behind.

As we look back at the stellar career that Mithali Raj has enjoyed and the remarkable contributions she has made, let us analyse her strengths and weaknesses with the bat.

Strengths

Remarkable consistency

When you think of consistency in the Indian team, the name of Mithali Raj instantly springs to the mind.

For her consistency and calmness, she has elicited repeated comparisons with Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni — comparisons which are largely unfair as, like she had pointed out, the greatness of women’s cricketers deserves to be celebrated on its own terms.

Raj went into the World Cup ranked second in the ODI batting rankings and with four half-centuries off her last six matches. As expected, she beat Charlotte Edwards during the World Cup to become the highest run-getter in women’s ODI cricket.

She has scored 6190 ODI runs from 186 matches at an average of 51.58. She was also the second-highest run-scorer in the World Cup with 409 runs at an average of 45.4 with three half-centuries and a century to her name.

Perfect timer of the cricket ball

One of the hallmarks of Raj’s batting is her remarkable sense of timing. The Indian uses her gift of timing to perfection to manoeuvre the ball into gaps to pick up boundaries.

Whether it is a textbook cover drive through extra-cover or a flick of the wrists to find the gaps on the leg-side, Raj always depends on her sense of timing to pick the gaps to perfection.

She never tries to muscle the ball but picks her spots by playing beautiful cricket shots. It is her technique and sense of timing that has made her the highest run-getter in ODI cricket.

And unsurprisingly, her shots because of their perfection are extremely elegant to watch.

Use of feet against the spinners

If she uses the pace of the bowlers to execute her shots to perfection against the seamers, it is Raj’s perfect footwork against the spinners that sets her apart from the rest.

During her brilliant century against New Zealand is the do-or-die group match in this World Cup, what stood out was how well she used her feet to get to the pitch of the ball.

Stepping out and repeatedly lofting the spinners on both sides of the wicket is clearly her forte. But what is good is that she does not go for the jugular even when she steps out — her head position remains very still and she simply picks her spot even when she is stepping out.

Also, a strong backfoot player, her threat of stepping out compels the bowlers to drop it short at times. Raj anticipates the short ball beautifully and rocks back to cut it square of the wicket.

Brilliant captain

Beside her being the most reliable bat in the team for well over a decade now, it is Raj’s service to the nation as a captain that stands out. It is under her captaincy that the Indian women’s team has taken great steps and reached where it has today.

Almost all the players in the team profusely heaped praises on their captain and emphasized how it would have been impossible for the team to progress so far without her stewardship.

Nonplussed in pressure situations, she remains calm and brilliantly brings in the bowling and fielding changes to drag the team back from difficult situations.

And photos of her calmly reading Coleman Barks’ translation of Rumi’s poems before coming into bat created a sensation during the World Cup.

That was ample proof of her inimitable sense of composure and the belief in her abilities.

Raj reading Rumi's poems before coming in to bat

Weaknesses

Struggles to rotate the strike

Raj’s main weakness of late has been her inability to rotate the strike at times. As we saw during the World Cup, she sometimes goes into a shell when she cannot find boundaries and struggles to rotate the strike as much as required.

This slows her down considerably - which is what happened in the World Cup match against Australia in the group stages where she managed to score 69 off 114 balls, or the 36 off 61 against Australia in the semi-final and 17 off 31 against England in the final.

Her inability to rotate the strike while not finding the boundaries contributed to a very slow strike-rate which often slowed down the innings.

Not a power hitter

Though Raj’s elegance and perfect timing works well for her, the difficulty she has been facing of late is because of her inability to play a more attacking role.

When she does struggle to find the boundary, she cannot rely on brute force like Harmanpreet Kaur does, to go after the bowling.

Her inability to notch up a gear and shift to a more attacking role depending on the requirement sometimes works against her as she eats up too many deliveries in the process.

But this does not become a problem all the time, as she has the ability to find the gaps and has players after her like Kaur or Veda Krishnamurthy who can muscle the ball.