Arundhati Reddy — the audacity to hope and the strength to realise
The Hyderabadborn pacebowling allrounder is a cricket tragic looking for a rainbow at the end of the tunnel a way back to the national team. With the kind of performances she has registered and the personal sacrifices made along the way, she has reaso
Railway. With a heart loaded with doubt and the fear of slipping into whatifs, she discussed a potential exit from the Railways fold with George last year. And leave she would, after a career comprising of 24 ListA and 21 T20 fixtures for Railways and five twentyover games for Central Zone
“I suggested she move to Kerala. I belong to a middle class background myself and so I know how valuable finances are to this decision,” George recollected. He credits the Women’s Premier League for helping Arundhati to muster up strength and cut the umbilical cord.
“WPL gave her the security to move away from Railways. There’s some money there so she won’t starve. WPL gives these players a platform to be noticed and she then has this state team option (Kerala) that is making knockouts in the ecosystem. Kerala is a supportive space. The team trains in good grounds and players get good facilities and a lot of matches. When she came in, she was shocked at how well she was treated. Everyone is handled that way,” George claimed.
“The T20s were a bit of a dampener for her,” he remembered. “Catches were dropped off her bowling and so on. The Oneday games are where she really opened up performance wise.”
Arundhati had four wickets and 252 runs to her name in five innings for the side, averaging 126 with the bat. However, while Kerala made the knockouts in the T20 tournament, it couldn’t manage so in the onedays. With her experience, a place in the South Zone squad for the Senior MultiDay Trophy was also guaranteed and she had made that count too. In two games, she has 174 runs from four innings and two wickets (so far) to her name. The 57 she scored in the first innings of the final came after two days spent needing an IV after which she battled intense heat and hydration trouble for 122 balls.
All this after an encouraging outing in