"My father had a heart attack..." - Shafali Verma breaks silence on getting dropped from Team India

India women's opener Shafali Verma has finally opened up for the first time since she was dropped 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 too long ago.

Shafali Verma was dropped from the Indian team after a series of inconsistent performances with the bat. Her poor run prompted the selectors to move towards Pratika Rawal, who has enjoyed a great start to her international career so far.

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Shafali Verma breaks silence on getting dropped

While speaking to The Indian Express, Shafali Verma remembered the time when she was dropped from the team. She claimed to have hidden the news from her father due to his sensitive medical condition at that time.

“It’s not easy to get over it. I didn’t want to reveal because my father had a heart attack about two days before I got dropped from the team. I hid the news from him till he got better. He was in the hospital. I told him a week later,” Shafali said.

However, when Sanjeev Verma (Shafali Verma's father) 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 as kids even we forget our strengths, but they don’t forget. He reminded me of the workouts and drills from my childhood. These are my strengths, and sometimes you need to work on them to remember how good you are at them,” the India opener added.

Pratika Rawal grabs her chances

Shafali Verma was replaced by Pratika Rawal in India's ODI team. Rawal has been simply magnificent and has taken 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 her international career. However, she was at her absolute best in the next series against Ireland.

The 24-year-old opener 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 stitched some important partnerships with Smriti Mandhana at the top to give India some fine starts.

Shafali Verma's bright domestic form

Shafali Verma further spoke about working on his weaknesses and how to build an innings to get a big score. She revealed how she is constantly working hard to get better in building an innings.

“The constant work is on areas like when deliveries don’t come to my strengths, how do I take singles, how do I rotate strike, how do I build my innings. Everyone knows my strengths, but the constant goal is to mentally get smarter by learning how to build an innings better,” she claimed.

Verma has enjoyed a prolific run in domestic cricket ever since she was dropped. She has smashed 527 and 414 runs respectively in just 12 matches in two domestic tournaments she has played.

She has scored runs at a brilliant strike rate of 152.31 and 145.26 respectively in both these tournaments. She has managed to score big runs with three hundreds in these 12 matches so far.