On expected lines, veteran Indian women’s legend Mithali Raj has announced her retirement on Wednesday through social media, bringing down the curtain on a glorious 23-year career.
Mithali Raj Announced Her Retirement
Raj took to Twitter to confirm her decision, saying that “I feel now is the perfect time to call curtains on my playing career as the team is in the capable hands of some very talented young players and the future of Indian Cricket is bright.”
Fans on Twitter flooded the site with their tributes and laudatory tweets for the leading women’s international run-scorer, who is the torchbearer, the pioneer of women’s cricket in India, who gave inspiration to millions of other females to pick up a bat.
Among all the tweets, one from renowned statistician Kausthub Gudipati stood out and has got the fans talking. This Twitter user pointed out the astonishing similarities between the retirements of Mithali Raj and former India men’s captain MS Dhoni, who retired in 2020 but had played his last game for India in 2019 – the loss to New Zealand in the 2019 World Cup semi-final.
A Fan Highlighted Similarities Between MSD And Mithali
Similar to Dhoni, who scored a fifty in that semi-final but couldn’t take India over the line, Mithali Raj, too, scored a fifty in his last game – which was in the Women’s World Cup earlier in March when her half-century, too, went in vain as India lost the match and were knocked out.
Further, both Dhoni and Raj captained India in a record number of matches. Also, both didn’t get any farewell match.
Here’s the tweet that’s going viral which shows the similarities between Dhoni and Mithali Raj’s retirement:
MS Dhoni and Mithali Raj:
– Captained most matches for India
– Last international match in recent ODI World Cup
– Both score a fifty then
– But India lost that match and out of World Cup
– Both retire later without a farewell— Kausthub Gudipati (@kaustats) June 8, 2022
As a 16-year-old, Raj had made her ODI debut in 1999 and notched up a century on debut. She represented India in 12 Tests, 232 ODIs, and 89 T20Is amassing a tally of 10,868 runs making her the leading run-scorer in women’s international cricket; with 7805 runs in ODIs, she’s the highest run-getter in women’s ODIs.
She led India to the final of the 2005 World Cup, hitting a brilliant 91 in the semi-final. 12 years later, she once again led India to the World Cup final in 2017, in England, becoming the first, and only, male or female, Indian to captain the team to two ODI World Cups finals. However, India lost both of those finals.
