The India women’s batter has broken records in her first six matches, but she’s relentlessly working on herself to get even better
Shashank Kishore26-Apr-2025
Pratika Rawal, 24, smiles at the wonder of it all – wearing the India blue and sharing the dressing room with idols she once watched from behind the boundary ropes.After a heady initiation into international cricket – the 444 runs scored by her are the most by any batter in their first six innings in women’s ODIs – she’s now coming to terms with where she’s at.”It was surreal at the start,” she says, smiling, “now it feels like I belong here.”Rawal has quickly formed a strong opening partnership with Smriti Mandhana, prompting selectors to overlook Shafali Verma despite Verma’s stellar WPL 2025 performance. Now, with a tri-series against Sri Lanka and South Africa coming up, a solid run-in to the 50-over World Cup that India will host later this year, Rawal has a chance to cement her place in the team.If you watched her bat against West Indies and Ireland in 2024-25 – crisp footwork, clean strokes, an uncluttered mind – you might have assumed Rawal’s calm is second nature. But it wasn’t always this way.Related
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Her poise has been earned, over years of tireless work and small, deliberate choices: making her bed, decluttering her room, and slowing down her speech to match the pace of her thoughts.”The way you’re off the field is going to reflect how you’re going to behave on it,” she says. “I used to react a lot. I was short-tempered, I spoke very fast. But I worked on that too. I had to.”Rawal had a guiding hand in Deepti Dhyani, her coach, mentor, and unwavering anchor. “She doesn’t get enough credit,” Rawal says. “She worked on every part of me, my routines, diet, fitness, mindset. Everything.”There was a bit of technical work involved too. “Like punching the ball off the back foot, I didn’t know how to do it, I didn’t even know it was a shot when I started,” she says.Rawal credits her coach, Deepti Dhyani (left), for shaping her as a player and person•Pratika RawalAs Rawal started breaking ground in age-group cricket – she made her Delhi Under-19 debut at 14 – Dhyani also taught her how to carry herself after scoring a hundred, and how to rise again after a duck. Recently, conversations have revolved around channelling disappointment. Away from training, Rawal’s mother anchors her with her simplicity and faith. “She often says, ‘Whatever happens, happens for the best.’ And it stuck with me.”That mindset helped when Rawal wasn’t picked at the WPL auction ahead of the 2025 season. It must have hurt, especially after the high of her maiden India call-up just a day earlier. But Rawal looks at it differently. “It was an opportunity to improve. You need to have that hope. Like mom says, maybe it was all part of the plan.”Rawal began playing cricket around the time she was ten years old. Back then, she barely knew the names of players in the Indian women’s team. It wasn’t until her father told her about Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami that she began to follow the women’s game and see the possibilities. In 2017, when she watched India play at the World Cup final at Lord’s, Rawal’s motivation grew manifold.”Harry ‘s 171 in that tournament was epic, it got me even more excited. I knew I wanted to play like her,” Rawal says. Last year in Pune, she stood at training, trying to summon words in front of Harmanpreet Kaur when their paths crossed for the first time in domestic cricket. “I wanted to tell her how big a fan I was… but the only thing I managed to say was, ‘Good morning, .'”Off the field, Rawal brings her mind into the game with the help of psychology – not just as a subject, but a way of life. “One of my professors once said, ‘Psychology isn’t just about understanding others. It’s about understanding yourself.’ That hit home.”She still remembers when the former India allrounder and India women’s coach at the time, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, helped her connect the dots between a dropped head and a misjudged flick shot during a camp at the National Cricket Academy. “That’s when I realised even body language can cloud your decisions. He told me I was playing the shot perfectly in the nets, even to balls from outside off. But somehow in a match, I was lbw flicking a leg-stump half-volley.”Cricket, Rawal believes, is as much a mental game as it is physical. “If you’re nervous, your body language gives it away. Opponents can sense it. So why can’t we flip it – use our own mindset as a weapon?”She has seen that power first-hand, for instance, when she didn’t score in last year’s Senior Women’s Multi-Day Competition but then walked into a high-performance NCA camp and found resolve from Kanitkar’s critique. Or the time she stepped back from basketball – a sport she played at the national level – to give wings to her cricketing dream.Smriti Mandhana and Rawal’s 233-run opening partnership set India up for a record-breaking 304-run win over Ireland women earlier this year•BCCI”It was too much. I used to get injured – dislocated [my] shoulder and all,” she says. “My dad told me, ‘If you want to excel, you’ll have to choose.’ I chose cricket. It made me feel something different inside.”While cricket took priority, she was clear her education needed to progress in parallel. “I dropped U-19 once for my board exams,” she says. She also switched schools, moving to the well-regarded Modern School in Delhi, which she says helped develop confidence, not just in academics but as a communicator.”I wanted to be good at public speaking. I was shy. But I learnt how to express myself there.” Now that she’s done with her graduation, her parents are happy, and her coach is already nudging her towards doing a master’s in psychology.Rawal’s journey has been shaped by structure but not rigidity, as she has explored her interests and grown through the opportunities she has been given, like when she moved teams, from Delhi to Railways – a powerhouse side loaded with India players – after the 2023-24 season. Rawal saw it not as a step away from Delhi but a challenge worth embracing. “It’s hard to break into that side that is full of India players. But I like being challenged.”The first time she trialled for them in 2023-24, she wasn’t picked. So she worked harder. Scored runs. Then came the call. “When you get picked on performance, that respect, that’s what matters,” she says.Rawal remembers a semi-final in the Inter State Women’s One-Day Competition last year, when she scored a fifty for Delhi against Railways. “At the player-of-the-match ceremony, the match referee mentioned my name, and the entire Railways team hooted for me. That felt like respect.”When Rawal is not training, she’s sketching, which she says helps her focus. Or watching on repeat. Or gossiping with her mom. “I love staying at home. You’re out so much with cricket,” she says.And yes, she dreams of the World Cup. But she’s in no hurry. “I visualise things a lot – like how I celebrated my first hundred [against Ireland] by kissing the India flag. I’d seen that in my mind so many times before it happened.”Does she believe in manifestation? “Yes,” she says, without blinking. “Absolutely. Holding that World Cup trophy.”