Why Deepti Sharma's comparison with Ben Stokes is not a compliment

Following India Women’s brilliant 347-run win over England Women in the recent one-off Test at the Dr. DY Patil Sports Academy in Navi Mumbai, head coach Amol Muzumdar referred to all-rounder Deepti Sharma as the “Ben Stokes of the team”.

Deepti, 26, had a sensational Test match. She scored 67 and 20 during her two visits to the crease. On the bowling front, with her canny off-spin, she claimed 5/7 from 5.3 overs in the first innings and followed it up with 4/32 from eight overs in the second essay as India Women handed England Women a mauling.

While India’s margin of victory was the highest in terms of runs in women's Test history, Deepti became only the second Indian after Shubhangi Kulkarni to pick up five wickets and score a fifty in a Women’s Test.

Praising Deepti, Muzumdar told WV Raman during the official broadcast after India’s triumph:

"You are talking about Stokesy - I jokingly call her as the Ben Stokes of the team. She is fantastic. The confidence she has shown in her batting and the confidence she has gained in these two innings - nine wickets in the Test match and a fifty! She is an important cog in the wheel when she comes [to bat in the] lower order, bowls crucial overs, and gets wickets.”

While Muzumdar’s comments were made to hail Deepti, the comparison from the Indian coach was anything but a compliment.

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No scope for comparison between Deepti and Stokes

Comparisons in cricket are always open to debate. One can still understand players from different eras like Sir Viv Richards, Sachin Tendulkar, and Virat Kohli being evaluated based on their supreme records in men’s cricket.

However, there can be no fair comparison between a male and a female cricketer because the way the sport is organized and played in the two domains is vastly different.

If we talk about women’s cricket, female players hardly get to play any Test matches during their international careers. If we take the example of Deepti herself, she made her international debut back in November 2014. Since then, she has played 83 ODIs and 101 T20Is, scoring 1912 and 971 runs, respectively, apart from claiming 93 and 108 scalps with her off-spin.

In contrast, the Test against England in Navi Mumbai was only the third of her career. She has 239 runs to her name at an average of 59.75 with three half-centuries. With the ball, she has 14 wickets at an average of 10 with one four-wicket haul and one five-wicket haul.

On the other hand, Stokes has played 97 Tests, 114 ODIs, and 43 T20Is, scoring 10,165 international runs with 18 hundreds and 55 fifties. With his medium pace, he has picked up 297 wickets across the three formats of the game.

While Deepti matches Stokes to an extent in terms of her white ball numbers, the volume of red-ball matches she has played is too low for her to draw a comparison to the England talisman.

And this is not to downplay the Indian all-rounder’s achievements. It is only unfair to her. If she had played as many Test matches as Stokes and, assuming that she produced incredible numbers with both bat and ball, it is Stokes who could have been compared with Deepti and not the other way around.

We never know what Deepti would have achieved had she played as many matches as Stokes in Test cricket. She might have fared better or worse, but the fact is we will never know because of the completely distinct dynamics of men’s and women’s international cricket.

But what can be said with complete surety is that both are very good players within their respective spheres.

Coming back to Muzumdar’s Stokes reference while speaking about Deepti, he meant it to be a compliment. But he himself mentioned that he “jokingly” refers to the Indian all-rounder as Stokes of the Indian team. Reason enough to not take the statement too seriously.

As for Deepti, she can continue to bask in the glory of her brilliant all-round show against England in the one-off Test.