Indian Skipper Mithali Raj Says Women Cricketers ‘Anxious’ About Future, Lack Sense Of Purpose

The former Indian Skipper Mithali Raj believe there is definite need for purpose for the players who don’t have matches as goals right now.

Indian Women's Cricket team captain Mithali Raj. (File Photo/ Getty)

New Delhi: In these new normal times when a lot of challenges have cropped up in the field of sports, India’s former skipper Mithali Raj said female sports persons are anxious about their future and don’t know what they are training for. The Indian captain said the national team’s players have been battling with “anxiety” and a lack of “sense of purpose”. In the current health pandemic, the country’s women cricketers are short of opportunities to play. While sharing her views at the ICC 100% Cricket virtual discussion, Raj said uncertainty “comes even as the players look for any competitive cricket or any international series, even domestic for that matter” in a COVID impacted world, as per the espncricinfo.com. The skipper added there is definite need for purpose for the players who don’t have matches as goals right now. “Before, we used to plan for any international series if it is an away-going [tour], so players would accordingly prepare. And if it’s a home series we prepared accordingly, but now we don’t know why we train,” she mentioned. After retiring from T20Is last year, Raj's last played international cricket in November during the ODI series against West Indies. As per the report, Raj was expected to participate in the knockouts of the inter-state senior women's one-day league for the domestic side Railways in March but the pandemic disrupted all schedules. Meanwhile top-level women's international cricket is expected to resume on Monday - hosts England take on West Indies in the first of five T20Is in Derby. On the resumption of training, she added there are new challenges for Indians. "But one positive is that things are slowly improving in terms of access to the facilities; but again, there are a few changes in terms of all the training facilities work on time slots. Like, earlier, we would just walk in and start batting and we would have some good 10-15 net bowlers and we could bat for one to two hours," she said, as per the report.