A player whose real worth can’t be measured

Mithali Raj has no strike rate. She has 7,805 runs, the only player to score more than 7,000 ODI runs (or 6,000, for that matter). She averages 50.68. Over 22 years.

But she has no career strike rate.

This is because she played some of her cricket at a time where the number of balls faced was not always recorded, not even in international cricket. And thus, her career strike rate cannot be ascertained. She belongs to another era, literally another century, having made her debut in 1999. Her GOATness is not up for debate, but can be further divined by looking deeper at that era.

I have memories of Mithali playing her last under-19 tournament, or maybe it was a senior tournament. It was in Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh. Or maybe it was Hazaribagh, Bihar. Some unheard of town, I can’t be sure which, because scorecards of those games have not survived. What I am sure of is that a 19-year- old girl in a wide-brimmed hat with a braid (or two) poking out from beneath it played that tournament. She was one of us. Scraping her knees on the same barren outfield, living in the same dormitories, sleeping on mattresses on the floor just like the rest of us.

She had the same stories as we did; of travelling across the country in trains, often unreserved, banding together to beat up eve-teasers. And yet she was writing very different stories too.

She was already an international star, just three years into her career, having scored a double hundred in Tests at age 19. From her debut to 2006 Mithali kept women’s cricket out of anonymity, ensuring the common man never forgot our sport.

She was not an attention seeker, she grabbed attention with runs. At 16, she scored a hundred on ODI debut, reminding the country of our talent after a disappointing home World Cup.

That Test double century made her the highest individual scorer in women’s Tests and put the entire ecosystem in the spotlight. And if you started to forget about women’s cricket again, there she was, taking India to our first ever final of the Women’s World Cup in 2005, with a gritty fifty on a dodgy knee in the semifinal. That final was the only match televised from that World Cup. In an era of little visibility, Mithali kept shining the light. Then BCCI started running women’s cricket in 2006, but women’s cricket remained largely sidelined, Mithali remained Mithali: almost never out of form. She averaged over 40 for 19 of her 22 calendar years.

We see the numbers. But what we didn’t see was the pain she played through. I remember a tour to Australia in 2008-09 where I was ferrying out painkillers to her as she batted. Her knees gave her so much pain that they affected how she walked. Had it not been for BCCI’s medical facilities and no little will, we might have lost her then. Administrations dithered on women’s cricket. Professionalism was delayed (India only introduced central contracts in 2015). Through it all, she persisted.

And then the 2017 World Cup happened. Mithali led India into that tournament on a golden run: she started it with her seventh consecutive 50+ score. We reached our second World Cup final, and our team fell tragically short of the title but woke a nation to the talent they always had.

She had less than 7,000 Twitter followers before the tournament; today she has more than 90.5 lakh. These aren’t just numbers, these are lives she’s touched, fans she’s created.

Mithali’s greatest legacy is not the runs she scored or the matches she won. It is that she’s helped change the story for girls who want to play cricket in our country.

She never played gully cricket, but now thousands of girls do. She has a biopic on the way, and rubs shoulders with prime ministers. And she’s told every aspiring female cricketer: This can be your story too.

The Mithali Raj story is such a big part of the identity of Indian cricket. Even when no one knew women’s cricket, they knew Mithali Raj, and her partner-in-crime, Jhulan Goswami. So, today is for celebration of the player whose strike rate couldn’t be captured. And the woman whose impact can’t be measured.