Mithali Raj retirement: With India’s defeat against South Africa, Mithali Raj’s 23 years old international career came to an end.
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South Africa defeated India by three wickets in the last league game of the ICC Women’s World Cup. With this defeat, India’s journey in the World Cup came to an end. Not only India’s journey but India’s captain Mithali Raj’s 23 years old career also came to an end.
India opted to bat first and managed to score 274 runs, courtesy of half-centuries from Mithali Raj, Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma. Harmanpreet Kaur also scored a brilliant knock of 48 runs.
The match went to the last over, and it was a thriller. South Africa needed three runs in the last two balls, and Deepti Sharma got the wicket of Mignon du Preez. Although, it was a no-ball and it turned the game in South Africa’s favour.
Mithali Raj retirement
It was already known that the World Cup will be the last tournament for Mithali Raj. After the game, she said that everything must come to an end. Mithali Raj asked the supporters to keep supporting the Women’s team.
“Everything should come to an end, it’ll take time to settle the emotions,” Mithali Raj said after the game.
“Thanks to everyone who turned out for every Indian game, it was nice to hear your cheers and keep supporting the girls and the Indian women’s team in the future.”
Mithali Raj made her debut against Ireland Women in an ODI game in 1999. She scored 114 runs in the game and stitched an unbeaten partnership of 258 runs with Reshma Gandhi. Raj is the only cricketer in the Women’s division to score over 7000 runs in ODI cricket.
Mithali Raj has scored 7737 ODI runs at 50.56, whereas she also has 2364 T20I runs and 699 test runs under her belt. She has scored the most number of international runs in Women’s cricket. Mithali is the youngest player to score a double-century in Women’s cricket (19 years 254 days).
Mithali Raj won 154 ODI games as captain, which is the highest for any player in Women’s cricket. In 2021, Mithali became the first Indian women cricketer to win the prestigious Khel Ratna Award.
