MUMBAI: The last time India women played a home Test, Shubha Satheesh, daughter of a BEML (Bharat Earth Movers Limited) employee, was playing every sport she could in Mysuru, but with a little more love for cricket. Little did the then 15-year-old know that she would get the debut cap on a bright December morning almost nine years later when India played their next home Test.
"I didn't have a plan to become a cricketer or anything at that time, but I just wanted to play the game. That's it," the 24-year-old said after day one of the play against England at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. Once the openers got out early, it was Shubha (69), and fellow debutant Jemimah Rodrigues (68), who scored fifties to help the team recover. Even as they got out, Harmanpreet Kaur (49), Yastika Bhatia (66) and Deepti Sharma (60 batting) kept the innings going as India finished day one with a mammoth 401/7 in 94 overs.
"It's a really special moment for us," Rajath, her coach from the Bowlout Cricket Academy in Mysuru told this daily. "She is a very dedicated player, who has struggled a lot to get there. She's been waiting for this moment for the last two years. Two years back, she got the most runs for Karnataka and was selected for the one-day challengers. In the domestic league stage before the Challengers, she fractured her finger and came back without playing."
However, none of those hardships mattered for Shubha as she invested almost seven years in the domestic circuit without giving up. And when it was her time to take the bull by the horns, she did not shy away from smashing the English bowlers, whom she had never faced. Shubha hit the very second all of her Test career to four off Lauren Bell. A glorious drive back past Kate Cross and a punch through cover against Sophie Ecclestone followed. No bowler bothered Shubha, and she showed them all of her shots. One by one disarming the opponent's threats.
"She could manage because of that solid technique she has. Like any bright batter, once your technique is sorted, it does not matter who comes in, whether it is the pacers or spinners. Because if you notice it's a technical one, she was playing all of them in front of her right side. Which means whether it was spin or no spin, she was able to negate it. So the minute the player can do that, you take the turn on the ball or the amount of swing out of the equation. It means you're picking the ball up early and she's also very strong off the back foot. So the minute it was pitched slightly back of the length, they gave her enough room to play through the cover region. She is somebody who has a lot of time to play her shot," Aarti Sankaran, former cricketer and coach who saw Shubha in the Zonal Cricket Camps in Guntur, says.
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For Aarti, it was all about the player who wanted to go that extra mile and do something more to improve themselves. "The first time I got to know was, if I'm not mistaken, 2016-17. And what I found coming about that kid for her propensity to have a lot of energy and her constant need to keep on doing something whether that is bowling or fielding. She's a brilliant fielder. She hates it when the ball crosses her. Like every time we used to have fielding drills at the ZCA camp, the first person to be there is Shubha and the last person to leave with you. 'Let me try one more time, one more catch. Can you push me a little harder? Can you give it that further away?' So that was very exciting to see. So that's the kind of player Shubha is," she explains what it is like to coach a live-wire player like Shubha.
Such was her dominance with the bat in the domestic seasons that she even made opposition players and coaches take notice. Aarti recalls when the Karnataka opener's carefree attitude didn't change against a bowler who had helped India win Test matches. "In 2020-21, the COVID season that we played in Chennai, the first ball she played against Tamil Nadu, she hit for a boundary. It was a powerfully hit cover drive, Niranjana Nagarajan bowled it. I said 'Freak, what a shot'. That talks about her mindset. I use the word preparation a lot. Preparation starts in the head and she's somebody very sorted in the head. She has not let any of her success get to her. She will go back the next day to work pretty much the same."
Rajath echoes these sentiments. "She is a rough cricketer. We call her Dada, after the Kannada movie star Vishnuvardhan, who went by the same nickname. She is that aggressive cricketer who never shies away. In general, she never bothered about bowlers. Just look at the ball and play it on merit. That's all," he says. That is exactly what she did against England on day one.
Even before Shubha could officially get her cap, Rajath was sure his ward was going to make a debut for India. "I called her yesterday and told her, you are playing on behalf of our Mysuru Club and Mysuru women's cricket. Every Mysorian is proud of you, just go with your flow. That's it."
Mysuru and the Indian women's cricket team have a special relationship. After all, that place witnessed India's second-ever win in the longest format on the home soil. Will Mysore-born and raised Shubha help India rewrite the history books in the coming days? Only time will tell.
