The Pratika Rawal story: 92.5 per cent in CBSE, psychology graduate, basketball champion and now India’s new opening batter
The Pratika Rawal story: 92.5 per cent in CBSE, psychology graduate, basketball champion and now India’s new opening batter
Pratika Rawal is a soft-spoken, confident young cricketer who loves to stay grounded. Her friends at the Modern School, Barakhamba Road, and Jesus & Mary College in New Delhi remember her as a friendly and helpful person and a bright student of psychology.
While she took her studies seriously and went on to secure 92.5 per cent marks in her CBSE examinations (twelfth standard board examination), Pratika fell in love with cricket quite early in her life.
She was in fourth standard when she started playing the game, and with some encouragement from her father, Pradeep Rawal – a BCCI-certified Level-II umpire of the Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA) – Pratika dreamed of making a career in cricket.
It, of course, wasn’t easy.
While maintaining a balance between education and cricket was the priority, her father took her to the Rohtak Road Gymkhana Cricket Academy to train under the veteran coach Shravan Kumar, who has guided several cricketers – including Ishant Sharma and Nitish Rana.
The Rawal family lives in Prem Nagar, a bustling neighbourhood in the national capital, and runs a cable television service business. When Pradeep took a 10-year-old Pratika to the academy, Shravan was surprised to see a ‘little girl so enthusiastic about the game’.
Soon, Pratika started training at his centre with boys of her age. “She was the first girl who trained at my academy. Before that, I would only work with boys, but when her father got her here, I thought, why not let her play as well,” Shravan told Sportstar.
Back then, the seasoned coach did not imagine that a decade later, his ward would go on to don the national colours, and when she eventually made her ODI debut for India against the West Indies at the Kotambi Stadium on Monday, it was an emotional moment for Shravan, too.
While Pratika’s father Pradeep, who is coincidentally in Vadodara to officiate the men’s U-23 tournament, watched her debut game from the stadium, Shravan was reminded of the days when Pratika, in her teens, would train at the academy.
“After her, three other girls from my academy went on to play international cricket – Priya Mishra, Simran Dil Bahadur and Nepal’s Puja Mahato. Pratika was always a very talented girl, but I would keep telling her to work harder,” Shravan said.
Back then, Pratika was a student at Bal Bharati School in Rajender Nagar. As she started playing well at the school level, people started taking note of her performances.
When she was in the ninth standard, Modern School approached her to join the institution. Since Pratika wasn’t too keen on shifting schools, Shravan remembers that he had even jokingly suggested to her to inform the Modern School authorities that she wouldn’t be able to afford the fees.
“But the Modern School was determined to bring her on board, and they were open to enrol her at the same fee as that of Bal Bharati because they knew she would add a lot of value to their cricket team,” the coach claimed.
Along with cricket, she also played basketball regularly and even won a gold medal in basketball at the 64th School National Games in Delhi in January 2019.
As she continued playing both sports, she also excelled in her studies. In her CBSE examination in 2019, she secured 93 in English and Psychology, 89 in Political Science, 95 in Economics and 88 in Physical Education.
While she had a huge scope to choose a different career path, cricket remained her first choice.
Gradually, she made it to Delhi’s age-group teams and slowly made it to the senior women’s team. In her debut year in 2021, Pratika made headlines with a 155-ball 161 for Delhi, and went on to amass 552 List A runs in 14 games in the 2022-23 season and followed it up with 411 runs in seven innings in the next season.
By then, she started training under former cricketer Dipti Dhyani, but former Rajasthan cricketer and erstwhile Delhi women’s team coach Dishant Yagnik also helped her in changing the technique.
“When I saw Pratika for the first time, I realised she was an incredible talent. But her game was more dominant on the leg side,” Yagnik, who is also an assistant coach at Rajasthan Royals, said. “We corrected her batting grip and then worked on the balance of the batting. So, in a combination of grip and balancing, she could hit long sixes. Before I met her, I heard she would only hit boundaries on the leg-side, so I tried to unlock her game on the off-side…” Yagnik added.
Delhi cricketer and one of Pratika’s friends, Tanisha Singh, was also part of the process when Yagnik tweaked the former’s technique. “A few of us would go to Dishant sir for regular training, and that’s when he encouraged Pratika di to play on the off-side. Since Dishant sir worked with the men’s team, his approach was different, and that helped all of us,” Tanisha said.
Those learnings helped her as she captained the Delhi U-23 team earlier this year and guided the team to the T20 Trophy final, where the team narrowly lost to Madhya Pradesh by three runs. She finished as the second-highest run-scorer for her team, amassing 182 runs from nine matches at an average of 26 and a strike rate of 85.94.
She also moved to the Railways recently. And, in the latest edition of the Senior Women’s One-Day Trophy, Rawal stood out as the second-highest run-scorer, amassing 411 runs from eight matches at an average of 68.50.
Dhyani, who has been a coach for a long time now, believes that Pratika has matured as a cricketer over the years. “Right from the beginning, she played as an opener, but as and when the team required, she batted lower down the order and has also delivered,” Dhyani said.
“I keep telling her and my other players that the team should come first and they should always go out in the middle with a positive mindset,” the coach said, adding: “This is just the start for her, and she has lots to learn. Pratika has also gone through a lot of ups and downs in her career because there were times when she would not get games despite having talent. But she took things in her stride and bounced back…”
It’s this indomitable spirit that has brought Pratika so far, and as she takes baby steps in international cricket, the 24-year-old has a long way to go.
Bon voyage!
