Kolkata: There are good cricketers and then there are impact players. Richa Ghosh definitely fits into the latter category, seeing how her contributions made a big difference to India’s World Cup-winning campaign.
Richa, the second wicketkeeper from Siliguri to make the India side after Wriddhiman Saha, now has a full trophy cabinet — the World Cup joins the U-19 World Cup, the Women’s Premier League title, Asian Games gold and the Commonwealth Games silver.
Hailing from the city of table tennis, Richa too tried her hands at the table. Her father’s passion for the game, however, drove Richa to shift to cricket. Manabendra Ghosh played club-level cricket and later turned to umpiring after failing to make it big.
It all began quite early as Richa made the Bengal U-19 side at the age of 12. She broke into the state U-23 side the same season and was just around 13 when she graduated to the senior Bengal side. She began as a bowler and even used to be an opening batter. Richa opened the bowling alongside the legendary Jhulan Goswami and also kept wickets.
I was amazed by her six-hitting capacity at such a young age. There was an element of fearlessness in that girl
Shib Shankar Paul
It was Shib Sankar Paul who asked Richa to bat down the order. “I was amazed by her six-hitting capacity at such a young age. There was an element of fearlessness in that girl. I felt she could be the game-changer and play as a finisher,” Paul, then the Bengal women’s team coach, said.
However, Paul, who met Richa for the first time in 2019, asked her to add new shots in her range-hitting capacity. “Initially she used to hit the sixes on the leg-side over mid-wicket mainly. But I asked her to try hitting over cover and mid-off,” the former Bengal pacer said.
The 22-year-old Richa ended up hitting 12 sixes, the highest in this edition of the World Cup. Interestingly, she suffered a finger injury during the match against New Zealand that saw her miss the next game against Bangladesh. But she played with pain to hit those big sixes in the semifinal and final.
In white-ball cricket where batting abilities matter, Richa edged out arguably the more technically sound wicketkeeper, Taniya Bhatia, for a place in India’s XI.
Richa instantly made an impression with a 29-ball 32 coming in at No. 7 in her debut ODI against Australia in 2021 and improved upon that with a quickfire 44 off 50 in the next match.
However, Paul gave credit to Richa’s hard work. “Her teammates would leave but she’d stay back, sometimes even until 8 or 9 pm, to do knocking. Perhaps that helped her imbibe the six-hitting ability into her muscle memory,” Paul added.
An ardent fan of MS Dhoni, Richa has designed her game much like the former India skipper whom she had the opportunity to meet a couple of times. For Richa, there’s definitely more to come.
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