Cricket has given us stories which inspire a generation of youngsters to either take up the sport professionally or excel in their respective profession and prosper in life. Such is a story of the young Priya Punia.
Coming from a small village of Churu in Rajasthan, Priya hails from a middle-class family and has carved her way up the ranks to fulfill her life-long dream of representing her nation. But the journey hasn’t been easy. It never is, as is the case with a lot of achievers in sporting history.
Priya’s father Surendra Punia saw the zest and passion of both his children for the game of cricket at a very young age. Priya along with her younger brother Rahul showed an umpteen amount of interest for the game which led to their father taking a huge loan, selling properties, to create a proper pitch and net facility for them to practice. There was a dream behind this step which I’m sure a lot of fathers dare to see with their children so that they can achieve special things.
This decision was also a result of a bitter experience that they had in Jaipur after moving from Delhi owing to her father’s transfer when the coach in the academy mocked her for being a girl and tried to lower her confidence in making it big in Indian cricket.
Interestingly, Priya has trained under Coach Rajkumar Sharma for seven years when she was in Delhi and incidentally he has also coached the Indian Men’s cricket captain Virat Kohli. In 2015, Priya Played for the North zone and scored a 266 ball 95 which led to a call up for a tour game in Bangalore against New Zealand for a 50 over match. But as luck would have it, she fell ill and could not take part in that game. She wasn’t even 19 at the time. Her first domestic stint in T20I was against Hyderabad representing Delhi in 2017 at Bengaluru. She quickly made it into the Delhi Senior Women’s side and played the One Day Championship in Bengaluru in 2018 scoring 407 runs in just 8 matches at an average of 50 plus. With 2 big centuries to her name and some consistent performances with the bat eventually led to her dream call up.
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Middle-order batswoman Veda Krishnamurthy was dropped from the Indian T20 side owing to a slump in performance and that made way for the 22-year-old Priya Punia to receive her maiden call up to the Indian T20 side for the tour of New Zealand in Jan 2019. It wasn’t the ideal start to her T20 career as her numbers did not speak of the amazing talent that she is ( 9 runs in 3 matches)
But Priya’s moment of glory came when she was included in the ODI series which was going to be played against South Africa in India and she didn’t miss out on the opportunity. An injury to star batswoman Smriti Mandhana meant that Priya Punia replaced her, opened the innings, and scored an unbelievable 75 not out chasing a total of 165 and finishing the game in the 42nd over itself also in the process winning the player of the match award in her debut game. She finished with 175 runs in 5 games at an average of 43.8 in that series.
Priya Punia’s 75 (highest runs from Team India’s side) gave them the solid start they expected in their chase of 226 posted by West Indies Women. #INDWvsWIW #INDvWI pic.twitter.com/iWUqcEl7bn
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) November 2, 2019
There is a pretty interesting fact associated with Priya that she had once refused a place in the Indian side on the assistance of a BCCI official and quoted, “There is no satisfaction in getting into a team on recommendation”. This shows her determination in making it on her own in the biggest stages. She is fairly new to the International Circuit but her confidence at such an early age is just amazing to look at.
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We at female cricket would like to pour in best wishes to Priya for the upcoming year and her future assignments as well.
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