Arundhati Reddy

Arundhati Reddy was 12 when she started playing cricket. Seeing her enthusiasm when she played around the house with her brother, her mother, a former semi-professional volleyball player, enrolled her in a cricket academy.

Reddy idolised MS Dhoni and wanted to be a wicketkeeper, but the then Hyderabad head coach Savita Nirala and Railways head coach and former India offspinner Nooshin Al Khadeer nudged her towards shaping into a seam-bowling allrounder. Reddy was only 15 when she made her Under-19 debut for Hyderabad.

She switched over to Railways in 2017-18, and soon went on to make her debut for India. She featured regularly in T20Is between 2018 and 2021, including the T20 World Cups in 2018 and 2020. But the emergence of Pooja Vastrakar and the presence of Shikha Pandey meant India couldn't fit too many seam bowlers in their XI.

Meanwhile, Reddy gave up her Railways job and switched teams to move to Kerala - on former India women's fielding coach Biju George's suggestion - in 2023-24 and made her comeback to the national side in 2024, a couple of successful seasons with Delhi Capitals in the WPL helping her case.