The first time CricketNext reached out to India cricketer Pratika Rawal’s father, a BCCI-certified umpire, Pradeep, the conversation went like this: CN: Hi sir, do you think Pratika would be interested in doing a small interview? Pradeep: I think so, but I need to ask ma’am first and get back to you. CN: Sir, who is this ma’am? If needed, we can talk to her representative… Pradeep: No, no, I meant Pratika ma’am. Now we all have to call her ma’am only no! Pradeep is a proud father and effortlessly hilarious. It’s this approach to life that underpins almost every step in Pratika’s career. Right from the start to her scoring 444 runs in six ODI innings — the highest in women’s cricket and the second-best overall — and becoming a frontrunner for India’s opener plans for the 2025 World Cup. “My father is like that only,” Pratika tells this website. “He likes to crack jokes and ease the atmosphere. And being a cricketer himself, he knows how to handle things… At times he feels like he’s my father, but at times he’s just my friend, a friend you can talk to anytime. He’s actually the one who developed this interest in me for cricket. I still remember him being there for me all the time, feeding me a lot of balls, helping me get the shots right, teaching me a lot of cricket fundamentals that you need to score runs during the match.” Pratika used to accompany Pradeep to his matches as an umpire and knew the sport. One day, when she was in third grade, the father and daughter went for their evening walk and Pratika spotted a line of kids in white uniforms in a nearby complex shadow-batting in sync. Pratika Rawal made her international debut last December. (BCCI Photo) Stumped, she wanted to try it out too and Pradeep agreed. He took her to the Rohtak Road Gymkhana Cricket Academy under famous coach Shravan Kumar (Ishant Sharma and Harshit Rana are among some of his pupils), who till then didn’t train girls. “The coach asked me to hold a bat,” Pratika recalls. “Luckily, my father had already taught me how to hold a bat, so my grip was right, and seeing me hold that bat correctly, the coach said to my father that she’ll be fine. And my father was like, — haan haan, sikhaya hai maine, aise karke — (I know, I have taught her myself) (laughs).” Pradeep was a medium pacer who couldn’t make a career out of it due to a lack of support from his family. But growing up, Pratika noticed how he admired Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Brian Lara, and wanted to emulate them. “He always made me sit with him and watch those matches with him, telling me, ‘aise pull maarna hai, aise defend karna hai ball ko’ (how play a pull-shot, how to defend). With that, I started developing interest in batting. And every time I held the bat, it gave me the sense of superiority that I belong here.” Batting came naturally to Pratika, or at least more naturally than bowling. “I used to bowl as well. I was a medium pacer once, but my bowling action is quite weird because I can’t jump correctly. Mera jump ek lefty bowler ki tarah hai (I jump like a left-handed bowler),” she says. Pratika was quite energetic as a kid. “I am a bit lazy now,” she admits. And she loved basketball and athletics among other sports as much as cricket. Her school, the Modern School at Barakhamba Road, used to have morning practice sessions where she practiced cricket and basketball on alternate days. Morning practice would be immediately followed up by school, and then her mother, Rajni, would take her to the cricket academy, which was followed by tuition (alternate days for different subjects). Rajni was keen to not let studies become secondary in Pratika’s life. The routine was exhausting and Pratika would often fall asleep without having dinner. In the later years of her school, basketball tournaments in the school forced her to miss cricket practices. And though she was enjoying playing both sports, becoming a cricketer at the highest level was her childhood dream and she knew hoops had to be given up for the bat. A life-changing mentor Pratika was only 14 when she was selected for the Delhi under-19 state team. She now admits that the level was too difficult for a teenager and runs were difficult to come by, which led to her getting dropped from the team and usually being in and out. Pradeep felt Pratika needed more focus on her fitness and batting, sparking a search for a new mentor. She found that in Dipti Dhyani, a coach with the Railways team, who worked with her on an individual level. “At that time, I only knew a few shots – pull, cut and drive – but when I got a session with Deepti ma’am, she told me there’s this another shot that you can add to your cricketing style, which is a back-foot punch,” Pratika says. “She taught me how to pierce those gaps between the gully and the point, which gave me a lot of runs in domestic cricket. Then we started working on my fitness, which is the most important thing right now, we started working on power, and had my own fitness trainer, dietitian, and physios, which comes a lot into play. The person that you see me right now is – it’s all her. The credit goes to her.” The hours and hours of work with Dhyani bore fruit for Pratika soon. She found consistency and jumped through the ranks of age-group cricket to make her senior debut for Delhi in 2021. She created ripples with a 161 off 155 with as many as 19 fours and five sixes for Delhi against Assam in Dehradun in the Senior One-Day Trophy. These were early signs but Pratika was showing the attributes that would get her to new heights later on: an unmatched concentration and a hunger for big runs. She attributes it to Dhyani’s decision to make her bat in the nets as long as she’d need when in the middle and the coach’s special ‘pep talk’ before every match. “She just keeps me on my toes every time,” Pratika says. “Even if I feel like I’m doing well, she’s there to tell me that I have to be careful and do this and that.” That India feeling The One-Day Trophy became her hunting ground for the next three years. In her debut season, she scored 247 runs, which became 379 runs the next year and 411 runs (the second-best in the tournament) at an average of 68.50 in 2023-24. She was in the middle of the 2024-25 season, now playing for Railways, in Kolkata when the expected India call-up for the ODI series against West Indies came. “I came back from practice, and we were in the mall, and suddenly my roommate called me saying, ‘You might get a call and just be prepared’. I was like accha theek hai, I’ll see when it comes. I won’t let my feelings get in the way. I was trying to act normal,” Pratika said. “Then the call came, and I was all excited. I didn’t want to show my emotions to the person who was calling me, so I was like, ‘Okay, fine, fine’ (on the call). But I was very excited. The person standing next to me was Sneh Rana, our captain, and I just hugged her out of excitement, saying ‘It has finally happened. I’ve been waiting for this for so long.'” Before her parents, Pratika called Dhyani, who didn’t show much emotion, but just enough for her pupil to gauge the excitement in her voice. There was a whole TV-like kerfuffle when Pratika called Rajni to tell her the news and she, being the mom, wanted to know every detail, but the cricketer also had to help the BCCI official with some documents. Pratika Rawal scored a majestic 154 against Ireland earlier this year in January. (BCCI Photo) Eventually, when the emotions settled, they decided to break the news to Pradeep. “I made him sit down for a video call, and I went like, ‘I just got a call, and I’m selected for the upcoming series.’ And he was like, ‘Acchaaa! Don’t lie to me, don’t joke around!’ He was all excited. And I could actually see his happiness, emotions on his face. He was very proud. They all were very proud,” she says. In a few days she was sharing the Indian dressing room in Vadodara alongside Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur and Richa Ghosh, among others – faces she had only seen on TV. “When I got into the room, I was a fangirling, that, Accha, aise ye log bag rakhte hai (that’s how they keep their bags) and all of that,” Pratika says. “The best thing about that environment was that it was very comforting. It was very welcoming. It didn’t feel like I was a newcomer. It felt like that I belonged here. They made me feel so comfortable. It didn’t feel like they were those big players. They just made me feel like I’m an equal, an equally responsible player and a player of a stature who can perform well.” Mandhana gave her the debut cap in the first match of the series, on December 22, making her the country’s 150th women’s ODI cricketer. The newly minted 35,000-capacity Kotambi Stadium, Vadodara had a special guest in attendance too, Pradeep. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Team India (@indiancricketteam) Pratika’s mother and younger brother were set to fly in for the third ODI after his exams, but Pradeep was adamant about catching his daughter’s debut from the stadium. A day before the game, he came to get the tickets from her in the team hotel and saw her in India’s practice jersey for the first time, telling her, that she looked ‘different’. “That’s how it started – that excitement. I won’t say that I was nervous, but I was overwhelmed that it was happening for me. But seeing him in the stands actually made me comfortable that at least there is one familiar face who’s rooting for me — that even if I don’t score, he’ll be there for me,” Pratika says. It was a testing debut. Hayley Matthews and Deandra Dottin were in excellent rhythm and kept her under pressure with their tight lines and lengths before change-up bowlers Karishma Ramharack and Afy Fletcher further kept the pressure on. Pratika was 8 off 32 at one stage and already had benefited from a dropped catch besides a caught-behind decision going her way. “I was holding my nerves, nahi nahi theek hai, it’s okay, give it time, spend more time on the wicket. But when the first boundary came, I was a bit eased down. You know, this is finally happening, now I can rotate the strike, I can push for singles, I can push for doubles. And luckily, it went well. I got a chance on, I think, the fourth or fifth ball, I nicked one that they didn’t refer, and then even a catch got dropped. I think it was meant to be for me to score those 40 runs in my debut match,” Pratika said. Pratika found four boundaries overall and reached 40 (69) when the beginner’s luck finally gave in, and Matthews plucked an extraordinary catch to get her out. And she could take her time, absorbing all the pressure, because Mandhana was at the other end, using her experience to manufacture extra boundaries to keep the run rate up. “Even if I played a maiden over, I still knew that Smriti di was there and that she’s gonna hit a few boundaries, which would take a lot of pressure off me. Also, there’s a lot of positive talk when we bat, she keeps backing me, ‘Just take your time, even if you feel like the ball is swinging in a different direction, even if the bowlers are hitting the right spots, just give it time. We have a lot of overs to get on to.’ That helped me a lot.” With the weight lifted off her shoulders, Pratika expressed herself brilliantly from hereon. She hit a 76 and took two wickets with her off-spin in the second ODI and followed it up with scores of 89, 67 and a record-breaking 154 in the three-match series against Ireland. Not just the strike-rate but her appetite for runs kept getting better with each knock, which was the perfect foil to Mandhana at the other end, who scored her century off 70 balls, the fastest for an Indian, in the 3rd ODI against Ireland. It was a new world for the team, which though would be better tested against much stronger opponents. “Also, as we play a lot more matches, I will get a lot of experience in how to rotate the strike, how to push for singles, and when is the best time to defend the ball,” Pratika adds. “But with the seniors that are around me, I think it’s going to be easier for me because I can actually look up to them… it’s model learning, aap dekh ke bohot kuch jaldi seekh jaate ho (You can learn a lot quickly by observing what they are doing) and can actually apply it to yourself.” Remaining chill Fascinated by behaviorism, why people act the way that they do, and what could be their childhood traumas, Pratika completed her graduation in psychology from Jesus & Mary College. She says studying the subject has made her a ‘better person’ because instead of judging people, she can show empathy for the complexities in their lives. Would she like to pursue it if she gets the time in the future? “Definitely!” she says. “The world would be a better place if people could understand other people’s emotions better.” It has also helped her cricket career. Though the last three months have been a fairytale, 2025 brings a lot of pressure — in a World Cup year there’s tough competition for the opening spot. Additionally, she has also missed out on showcasing her talent in the Women’s Premier League (WPL) after going unsold at the 2025 auction. But the lessons from psychology, and her mother’s (or every mother’s) wisdom of Jo hota hai acche ke liye hi hota hai (whatever happens, happens for good) has made it easy to wait for the next opportunity. You can ask her if she’s even slightly worried or just chill and she doesn’t shy away from saying that it’s the latter. “As a cricketer, you can never do enough on the field,” she says. “You still have a lot of areas that need improvement. So, this is the best time for me to improve myself. I’m still enjoying the WPL matches. It has been a great show there. The cricketers are just amazing. It’s always good to see them on TV and hopefully, in the coming years, I can make a mark there. But right now, I’m focused on myself and what my game needs. For example, I’m working on my game awareness as well as batting in different situations. It has been good. I’m chill right now. I’m just enjoying my time here,” Pratika said. She hopes to help India win the World Cup, too, but currently, her future plans are limited to the next domestic assignments. Her goals are uncomplicated: keep doing well in matches with a focus on red-ball cricket. “I can see my life more optimistically,” Pratika says. “You know, life happens that way only. It’s either up or down. It’s never constant. Mereko aisa nahi lagta hai ki I’m losing out on anything (Never feel like I am losing out on anything). I don’t compare myself to anyone. So, in that sense, psychology has made me a calmer person, there’s no anxiety or what’s going to happen next? How am I going to take it? It’s just one day at a time, one step at a time and just focusing on myself, not thinking about what’s happening around me.” It’s not all about moving faster than your competitors, sometimes you can jump forward by stopping to take a beat when others can’t. So, in the chaos of shortening attention spans and ‘entertainment, entertainment, entertainment’ around her, Pratika is doing just fine by playing the long game.