Interesting Facts about Devika Vaidya, Komal Zanzad, Shafali Verma, Sushree Dibyadarshini, Sushma Verma, Shikha Pandey, Veda Krishnamurthy, Ekta Bisht, Mithali Raj
- Devika Vaidya – Her full name is Devika Purnendu Vaidya, born and brought up in Pune. Maharashtra. At the age of seven, she used to neatly tuck her hair under the cap to impersonate a boy and play cricket. Besides playing cricket, she is a black belt in Taekwondo too. She is currently perusing Bachelors of Business Administration. She believes that playing with boys have actually improved her fitness level and made her a good fielder. Although she was playing gully cricket during school days, it was her mother who asked her to take the professional route to nourish her interest and talent. Brett Lee is her favorite cricketer. Smriti Mandhana is her best friend from childhood days.
- Komal Zhanzad – The pacer took nine wickets in an innings against Haryana in a domestic tournament. She terms Vidarbha Cricket Association as her second home. Pacer Zaheer Khan is her cricketing role model. She believes that studies and she are poles apart. She completed her graduated just because her parents wanted it. Her childhood memories are filled with scores of occasions when they used to brake window-panes and glasses while playing gully cricket.
- Shafali Verma – Born on November 5, 1993, currently, she is in the all-rounder role of Haryana Under-19 Women team. She had a sensational run in the recently concluded BCCI-U19 Women’s Cricket League Tournament where is made 376 runs in five innings at a whooping strike rate of 172.48 including two hundreds and a fifty. She hit 64 fours and three sixes during these five innings. Her best figures in bowling being 5.2-1-18-3. Apart from this, she was involved in seven caught behinds and three run outs.
- Sushree Dibyadarshini – The fresh talent from Orissa feels that there are so many talented players but because of the financial problem they are not able to practice or buy any expensive stuff. If not cricketer, she would have become an actress. She has also worked in a cricket based Tamil movie named ‘Kanaa’ where she played a character called ‘Deepika’. In earlier years, she used to play gully cricket with tennis ball. Mr. Khirod Behera from Jagruti Cricket Academy is her coach.
- Sushma Verma – Born in Shimla, she is the first Himachal Pradesh girl to find place in Indian squad. In 2009, right after her class XII exams, she applied for training at a newly inaugurated residential cricket academy for girls in Kangra district of HP. Although she had not played cricket formally till then, but the interest instilled by her cricket-fanatic grandfather to follow every game very keenly pushed her to choose sports over higher studies. But later on, she also got enrolled for BA at MCM DAV College in Kangra which is quit mid-way to completely concentrate on improving her game. Apart from cricket, she is state level player of volleyball, handball and badminton. She used to watch Adam Gilchrist’s videos on Youtube, AB de Villiers is her all-time favorite and idolizes M.S. Dhoni for wicket-keeping.
- Shikha Pandey – After securing third rank in state in her tenth board exams, she decided to concentrate more on studies and despite being involved in professional cricket for past two-t-three years, cricket was pushed to back-seat. Then in the second year of her graduation, she took to take cricket seriously and started spending her mornings in fitness classes and academics and afternoons in cricket training. She never let her academic performance adversely affected by her game and credits her Applied Mathematics lecturer Ujwala Phadte for helping her out of that tough phase. After turning down offers from three MNCs, she joined Indian Air Force in 2011. In an interview she said that from the age of five, dreamt of two things – one was to join armed forces and second one was to play cricket. With her debut for India in 2014, she fulfilled both of her dreams. She is a huge fan of singer Sunidhi Chauhan. Also, she loves to read autobiographies.
- Veda Krishnamurthy – She is youngest of four siblings in her family and started playing street cricket from the age of three. At a young age, she got enrolled for karate and despite of the fact that she didn’t like it much, she earned black belt in karate at the age of twelve. Her father who was a cable operator moved from a small town in Karnataka to Bengaluru to help realize her daughter’s dream and for improvement of her game. Veda credits Irfan Sait as her first coach and Mithali Raj is her role-model. She is usually termed as the naughty girl in the Indian dressing room along with being titled as ‘Selfie Queen’.
- Ekta Bisht – If not cricket, she would have been a football player. Her favorite cricketer is AB Devilliers and Mithali Raj is the most serious cricketer she have ever met. She loves to eat Tikki and Gol-gappe and Salman Khan is her favorite actor. Coming from a joint family where the family member size was quite huge, it was very difficult for her to buy expensive gears and other cricket equipments. But the things got managed due to family and coach’s support. Until a decade after she started playing cricket at the age of six, her father, who had retired as havildar from the Indian army, sold tea to make the ends meet.
- Mithali Raj – Her love for reading books started when she was offered to read Sidney Sheldon by a senior teammate during a long train journey when she was still in her teens. Her father, Dorai Raj was an officer in the Indian Air Force. Before taking up cricket, she was classical dancer and she has learnt Bharatnatyam. Her parents introduced Mithali to cricket so as to make her more active and disciplined because she was very lazy back then. If not cricket, she once said she would have been in civil services. She started to be called the “Lady Sachin” on social media after she crossed the 5000 runs mark.
‘Gully’ cricket player and close observer of Indian Cricket team and it’s matches. Straight forward and still socially admirable personality. Strong belief in teamwork and possess high leadership skills.