Indian captain Mithali Raj on Wednesday surpassed Charlotte Edwards’ record for the most runs in women’s ODI cricket during the ICC Women’s World Cup match against Australia at the County Ground in Bristol.
The Indian skipper has achieved the feat in less number of matches compared to Edwards and also holds the third-highest average of all time in ODI cricket.
A hallmark of Raj’s prolific career has been her consistency. In 1999, she burst onto the scene as a 16-year-old with a hundred on debut against Ireland at Milton Keynes, an innings that still makes her the youngest ever ODI centurion.
Three years later, and still only 19, Raj made headlines again, scoring 214 against England at Taunton in a Test match. That innings was the highest ever individual Test score at the time, a record surpassed only by Pakistan’s Kiran Baluch in 2004.
Raj has often been dubbed the ‘Sachin Tendulkar of women’s cricket’ and she shares one of the Little Master’s greatest traits – longevity. 18 years after her debut, she is still breaking records, and she recently became the first woman to score seven consecutive fifties in ODI cricket.
Perhaps Raj’s most remarkable stat, though, is that she has averaged over 40 runs in ODIs in her career spanning of 15 years since her debut – the same number as Tendulkar managed over his own career. At 34, she still has time on her side to better Tendulkar’s record.
