India women's opener Shafali Verma finally opened for the first time since she was pulled from the team. She calls it a difficult time for her family and revealed how she hid the news from her father, who had suffered a heart attack not long ago.
Shafali Verma has been dropped from the Indian team after a string of inconsistent performances with the bat. Her poor run prompted the selectors to turn to Pratika Rawal, who has enjoyed a great start to her international career so far.
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Shafali Verma breaks his silence on being dropped
While talking to The Indian Express, Shafali Verma recalled the moment when she was dropped from the team. She claimed that she withheld the news from her father due to his sensitive medical condition at the time.
“It's not easy to get over it. I didn't want to reveal because my father had a heart attack two days before I was kicked off the team. I hid the news from him until it was fixed. He was in the hospital. I told him a week later,” Shafali said.
However, when Sanjeev Verma (father of Shafali Verma) came to know about his daughter's situation, he immediately reminded her of her strengths and asked her to work hard on them.
“Father knows everything. Sometimes in childhood, even we forget our strengths, but they don't. It reminded me of childhood workouts and exercises. Those are my strengths and sometimes you have to work on them to remember how good you are at them,” the India opener added.
Pratika Rawal takes her chances
Shafali Verma has been replaced by Pratika Rawal in India's ODI squad. Rawal was simply magnificent and took her chances with both hands. She made her debut against West Indies at Vadodara in December 2024.
Rawal scored 134 runs in three matches at an average of 44.66 in the series, marking a good start to his international career. However, he was at his best in the following series against Ireland.
The 24-year-old opener has scored 310 runs in three matches at an exceptional average of 103.33 and a strike rate of 108.39. She scored one hundred and 2 fifties in the series. Pratika Rawal made some important partnerships with Smriti Mandhana at the top to give India some good starts.
Shafali Verma's brilliant domestic form
Shafali Verma went on to talk about working on his weaknesses and how to build an innings to score big. She revealed how she is constantly working hard to get better at building an innings.
“Constant work is in areas like when deliveries don't come to my strengths, how I take simples, how I change strikes, how I build my innings. Everyone knows my strengths, but the constant goal is to get smarter mentally, learning how to build an innings better,” she claimed.
Verma has enjoyed a prolific run in domestic cricket since being dropped. She smashed 527 and 414 runs respectively in just 12 matches in two domestic tournaments she played.
She scored runs at a brilliant strike rate of 152.31 and 145.26 in both the tournaments respectively. She has managed to score big with three hundreds in these 12 matches so far.