Pratika Rawal

A clear mind, solid footwork, and pristine, old-fashioned strokeplay - Pratika Rawal announced herself in international cricket with all these and a sequence of big scores.

She made her ODI debut against West Indies at the end of December 2024 and formed a consistent opening pair with Smriti Mandhana at a time when Shafali Verma found herself out of the ODI setup. She scored one century and three half-centuries, and tallied 444 runs, the most by any batter in their first six innings in women's ODIs.

Rawal began playing cricket at ten and made it to Delhi Under-19s at 14. However, it wasn't until 2020 that she chose cricket over basketball, a sport she played at the national level and has a gold medal in, from the School National Games in January 2019.

While cricket was her priority, she wanted her education to progress, too. So she dropped a year at the Under-19 level to focus on her board exams and focused on being good at public speaking. She has done her graduation and is pursuing a master's in psychology.

In order to challenge herself in domestic cricket, Rawal wanted to switch to Railways from Delhi and trialed for them ahead of the 2023-24 season. She was not picked that season, so she went back to domestic cricket, scored a heap of runs and made it to the Railways team the next season.