THE TALL, WELL-BUILT girl waited her turn to face the pacers in the nets of the Ram Narain Cricket Academy in Rohtak, Haryana. The early morning rains had forced her indoors, but her spirit could not be dampened. Shafali Varma, not yet 16 at the time, unleashed an array of shots, most of them aerial. The latest sensation in Indian cricket was not messing around.
Her mantra is simple. “Mujhe upar ka ball bohot pasand hai (I like it when the ball is pitched up), it is in my hitting zone,” she told THE WEEK, when asked about her love for lofted shots. Net practice, however, is not international cricket. There would be fewer opportunities to go over the top there. “I simply have to create the opportunities to do so,” she said.
And create them she did. At 15 years and 285 days, last November, the tomboyish girl with chubby cheeks broke one of Sachin Tendulkar’s records. She became the youngest Indian to to score an international 50; Tendulkar was 16 years and 214 days old when he did so.
Shafali’s explosive 49-ball 73 against the West Indies in St Lucia overshadowed her opening partner Smriti Mandhana’s refined half century. Shafali followed this up with a match-winning 69 in the second T20I.
There is another Tendulkar connection. Seeing the maestro play his last domestic innings at the Lahli ground in Rohtak inspired Shafali to pursue cricket full-time. “I told myself I had to play for India, I had to score runs,” she said. “Coaches used to tell me to play my fearless game. I have worked hard to get into the Indian team. When I got my cap, I was happy but told myself that I had to seal my spot.”
Though naturally serious and quiet, Shafali, who listens to sad songs to relax, has learnt to lighten up a bit after spending time with teammates such as Mandhana and the prankster Jemimah Rodrigues.
The 16-year-old is not an overnight discovery. She has been prolific in the domestic circuit for years, in categories much above her age group. However, it was her strike rate that forced people to take notice. In the senior women’s interstate T20 tournament in 2018, she scored 128 off 56 balls against Nagaland. In the same season, she amassed 463 runs from six innings, at a strike-rate of 197.86, in the Under-23 inter-state one-day competition. In the Women’s T20 Challenge match last year, which also featured foreign players, she hit five fours and a six in a 31-ball 34 against the Trailblazers. That innings impressed her teammate and England star Danielle Wyatt, who called her a “future superstar”. She was then called up to the Indian team for the T20Is against South Africa in September 2019.
Said Ashwini Kumar, her coach in Haryana: “Shafali was around 12 when she came to me. A kid of her age, be it boy or girl, usually cannot hit the ball past the boundary, but she did so with ease. I started playing her with the boys. What does one see in exceptionally or potentially talented kids? Their hand-eye coordination is good and their confidence is exceptional. In Shafali’s case, she has that confidence to play anyone. She is fearless.” He also said that she had a better understanding of the game than some Under-23 boys.
Her father Sanjeev, himself an avid cricket player, had got her long hair trimmed to disguise her as a boy when she was nine—she was filling in for her elder brother in a game. No one found out, and she helped the team win.
Shafali’s journey is as much about her father’s dream as it is about her passion, and has eerie similarities with those of the Phogat sisters. Like their father Mahavir Phogat, Sanjeev, too, brushed aside societal objections and encouraged his daughter to pursue the sport. When the few cricket academies in Rohtak refused to take a girl, he pleaded with and persuaded Kumar, a former first-class cricketer from Haryana and its Ranji Trophy coach, to take a look at her.
“We are three brothers and all of us were avid cricket players, but we never got the right encouragement or guidance,” said Verma. “I would teach my children to play with a tennis ball. The reason she hits the ball hard is because we would throw the ball at her with full strength. She graduated to playing with the boys older than her at the academy quickly.”
Said Shafali: “I was used to playing with boys more than girls since childhood. Therefore, I did not have much of a problem in adjusting when I played senior tournaments.” And, it showed. Shafali was named the best debutant and the best junior domestic cricketer at the recent BCCI annual awards.
At the time, however, the fees at the academy, Rohtak’s most modern, was financially taxing for the family. “I used to play with torn gloves,” said Shafali. “I did not want to tell my father and kept playing for a couple of months with them. One day, he checked my kit, saw the gloves and asked me why I had not told him. He got me new gloves the next day. I felt bad he got to know.”
Said Verma: “I borrowed a bit from here and there and ensured she got the best training possible. I would show her videos of Tendulkar, Mithali Raj and Harmanpreet Kaur to analyse how they played top-level cricket.”
The financial pressure has since eased, and Shafali now has a kit contract with SS. She also got a BCCI contract this year; she is in category C and has an annual retainer of Rs10 lakh.
At the recent India camp at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru, chief coach W.V. Raman focused on improving the fitness of the team. It was an eyeopener for Shafali. “I started doing more gym work,” she said. “There was a lot of difference when I made it to the senior team. I had to work extra hard at fielding as I was a wicketkeeper in the state team.”
Though she is just nine international matches old, rival captains and coaches are already talking about the threat she poses to new-ball bowlers. Ahead of the triangular series with England and Australia before the T20 World Cup, Australian vice captain Rachael Haynes told www.cricket.com.au: “I watched her on the Gold Coast during the A series. She is a player with a bit of an X factor, she is a clean striker of the ball.”
Shafali has lent much-needed muscle power at the top of the order, and is the perfect foil to the elegant Mandhana. She replaces Mithali Raj in the shortest format and has big shoes to fill. Fortunately, her unique style of play has kept comparisons at bay. “We have just told her to go play her natural game and not complicate things,” said Kumar. “We have worked on certain shots, especially her back-foot play, but have asked her to keep it simple.”