Dearest Mithali Raj,
Me and loads of cricket lovers have been terribly upset and shocked for the loss of Indian women cricket team in Semifinal’s of the World Cup.
Even more I have been upset due to your omission from playing 11 as I believe and know that your playing would have made us reach the finals. Well one has to give their 100% when representing the country and I have always seen you do just that. Well after knowing today how the coach Ramesh Powar behaved with a legend like you, I can only feel sorry for him as he himself killed an opportunity of being coach of T20 World Cup Winning team by not including you as only a brainless person could have thought of keeping you out of playing XI.
I do not think any of them have enough cricketing brains and it proved right that they continued with combination of three off spinner including captain herself, one pacer who did not bowl, one half all-rounder who also did not bowl. What surprised me even more is that none of the ex-Indian women cricketers except Smitha Harikrishnan, Pramila Bhatt etc have come out and spoken of your exclusion not being fair where male cricketers like Sanjay Manjrekar, Saurav Ganguly, Murli Kartik, Commentator Harsha Bhogale, ex England captain Nasir Hussain have spoken openly about it and so has ex-Australian captain Lisa Sthalekar and others. It’s just that ex-Indian cricketers are so scared of their future stakes & for their own positioning in women cricket.
This coach (Ramesh Powar) who is so prejudiced to one particular player i.e you just because you do not feed his ego and know about cricket more than he does. What’s even worse is that a player like Diana Edulji, in spite of being in a sensitive position in board justifies your being dropped. This is not cricket for sure!!
I know it and god knows it. But this is just to remind you that “ You are what you think you are “ so leave this at that and know that I am so proud of you and so is this Nation!
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Also Read : Mithali Raj’s letter to BCCI – accuses coach Ramesh Powar of bias
Minoti Desai is a former India Test and ODI cricketer. She is also the author of the book “She The Cricketer”
