Indian Women’s Test captain Mithali Raj, along with her teammates, is isolating ahead of their visit to England. The women’s outfit will play a historic one-off Test in Bristol against the hosts, followed by three ODIs and many T20Is. On Monday, head coach Ramesh Powar called a squad meeting, where Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami presented the jerseys to their teammates. Mithali Raj was spotted wearing pads while doing it and revealed the reason for the same.
The squad meet not only contained a presentation on the history of the Women’s cricket in India, but the distribution of jerseys. Mithali Raj and veteran pacer Jhulan Goswami – two of the senior-most members of the squad handed out Test jerseys to the Indian players like Harmanpreet Kaur, Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues, and others. With Raj wearing pads while performing it, fans were left intrigued about the same.
Ramesh Powar [Image-Getty]In response, Mithali Raj revealed that since she is the odd one out in their setup, she wanted to change something. Even though Ramesh Powar asked her to remove the pads, the veteran insisted on wearing them to get used to the pads for longer hours. Hence, she continued putting them on.
“Usually, I am the odd person out. I was trying to change something in my setup. I wanted the batting coach to address it. And we were doing a session before the meeting. And once the meeting started, Ramesh (Powar) did tell me that I could remove my pads. But I said ‘no I want to get used to wearing the pads for longer hours. Let me go through the meeting wearing them’. So that was one of the reasons why I continued to wear that,” Raj told Sports Today.
Mithali Raj and co. to play another Test this year:
Mithali Raj (Image Credit: Twitter)
Mithali Raj, who last played a Test against South Africa in 2014 that ended in a winning effort, will lead her side in a pink-ball Test later this year in Australia as well. It would be the women in blue’s first Test in Australia since 2006 and would be looking for redemption after losing the game 15 years ago by an innings and four runs.
