Everyone is wondering just how big a new is India Women’s having picked up Shafali Verma in the T20 squad for the South Africa series.
But let’s also contemplate the challenges that the remarkable opportunity brings, purely by the weight of the ‘age-factor!’
15 is an extraordinarily young age.
There’s no rocket science theory in this. There’s no mega revelation either.
By any stretch of the imagination, it doesn’t normally happen that at the ripe young age of 15, an individual can chart an international cricketing journey.
Let alone break records or aim at cementing a place as a permanent fixture in any squad.
The question isn’t whether one does or doesn’t possess talent. It’s about the sheer vacuum of inexperience that the precarious age of 15 brings.
That the selectors have picked Shafali Verma in the T20 squad to face the touring South Africans (with the first T20 going live on 24th of September) is in no way an ordinary piece of news.
It’s special beyond measure. It’s worthy of an endless string of compliments that the right-handed batswoman so deserves.
But at the same time, it puts a great weight of expectations on what, irrefutably are, young shoulders.
So how is 15 as an age? This is the age where let’s face it, one’s well hooked onto the social media having perhaps been introduced to it in the first teenage year.
It’s an age of hanging out with ‘besties,’ frolicking in denim stores to get the first perfect pair of jeans.
It’s an age where one discovers the vast joys of hanging out both literally (with friends) and virtually, on Netflix.
Yet, that the selectors have picked Shafali Verma in the T20 squad for the Proteas series is a commendable development in the context of Indian cricket.
Moreover, it gives us- fans as well as critics, backers as well as deniers of the rise of Women’s Cricket- a good reality check.
It’s a win-win development for the stature of the game, particularly from the standpoint of a cricket-crazy nation.
It could be said that the greatest moment in Shafali Verma’s rise to prominence- to an extent that at 15, she may soon debut in international cricket- was her mindblowing exhibiting of recent T20 hitting.
The knock that made all the difference
At the Women’s T20 Challenge, held earlier this year, Shafali Verma struck 128 and took only 56 balls to notch up the third-highest score ever registered in the Women’s T20.
Playing for Haryana, the naturally hard-hitting bat clubbed Nagaland to all parts of the ground to register a glorious hundred.
But, would she have thought- it’s worth pondering about- that this knock would guide her to the attention of the BCCI selectors?
The national women’s selection committee, without a doubt, may have been fretting ever since Mithali Raj- a doyen of Cricket- announced her exit from the sport’s shortest format.
That an important top-order spot had to be filled immediately would’ve been a worry that could be likened to the urgency of running to a gas station in the middle of nowhere with the wagon grinding to a halt.
To that regard, that the selectors have opted to go for an inexperienced but capable batswoman in picking Shafali Verma in the T20 squad is a bold move, exuding confidence.
It tells us that cricket in a sport-loving country is moving in the right direction and is age-agnostic and unaffected by concepts such as inexperience.
If anyone thought that in Pooja Vastrakar or a Jemimah Rodrigues, Indian Women’s cricket was being shouldered by really young cricketers, think again, as soon Verma will arrive to play her part in shouldering responsibility.
The big question, however, is, what will be the outcome of the newly-picked batswoman in the forthcoming series featuring the Proteas?
How well she be able to adapt to the challenge posed by a tall order of bowling forces in Kapp, Luus, Ayabonga, and the likes?