Women’s cricket team captain Mithali Raj was seen calmly reading a book before coming on to score a record 7th consecutive ODI fifty as India opened their Women’s World Cup campaign with a solid win against England in Derby.
While her innings (71 runs) certainly grabbed headlines because it was a record-breaking feat, social media did not miss the fact that she was not biting her nails or waiting anxiously to bat, but reading a book in total zen.
Reading BOOK 📖
Captain Mithali Raj is in different mode @M_Raj03 @BCCIWomenPic Courtesy : @StarSportsIndia #IndianWomenCricket #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/HguXAdwNzs— Indian Women Cricket (@IndianWomenCric) June 27, 2017
She was also pretty game when the ICC asked her in an interview about her pre-game regime of reading.
“It’s a habit that I read a lot and I do that even before going into batting. I do this not only in International matches, but in domestic matches too and that is probably what I was doing. It is just new because the match is being televised. So people got to know now,” she said, adding that it helped her calm any nerves before going out in the middle.
You’ll see her reading from a Kindle usually – but Mithali said that those were not allowed – so she grabbed a book from the fielding coach.
“Since Kindle is not allowed, so I had to borrow books from the fielding coach. He gave me this book by Rumi on ‘life’s essentials’. So I was just reading that.”
Mithali is set to become the first woman cricketer to reach 6000 ODI runs – the captain is currently on 5852 runs from 178 matches.
Feature image source: Twitter/Star Sports