During the warm up before any Women’s Premier League match, a new player is chosen to give the team talk inside the Mumbai Indians huddle. It was young Sanskriti Gupta’s turn to motivate her teammates hours before their match against Delhi Capitals in Bengaluru on February 28.
“I just told them ‘All the teams have one match winner, but we have 11 match winners. Play like a champion, like a warrior’,” Sanskriti told Sportstar a day after the fixture.
Moments before the 20-year-old from Sidhi in Madhya Pradesh gave her rousing speech, she was seen playing football. She was so involved in the game that she nearly crashed into the broadcast camera tailing her while at it. Interestingly, it was the ‘beautiful game’ which led her to cricket and that too, by chance.
While shifting schools in sixth grade, Sanskriti’s only association with the sport was playing gully cricket. “I used to play with the boys in the afternoon with a plastic ball that made a lot of noise. That would disturb the sleeping neighbourhood. I used to get scolded for that,” she laughed.
At her new new school, she would see her seniors head to an academy to play.
“I asked my seniors whether I could join them and I found out that they were playing football. I didn’t know what kind of academy it was. It was monsoon season and you usually play football in the rain and not cricket,” Sanskriti, whose love for football came from her father who had played till the district-level, recalled.
“When the rain went away, the cricket coaching started. My journey started from there.”
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In her nascent career so far, getting selected for her maiden WPL season has certainly been a milestone.
“I would wonder whether I’d get chances, but I am getting opportunities. They believe in me. My aim was to start slowly and increase confidence with every match. It’s been a good experience,” she admitted.
An off spinner, Sanskriti has taken three wickets in four innings for MI. Her first scalp was Kanika Ahuja of the Royal Challengers Bengaluru before she removed Vrinda Dinesh and Tahlia McGrath against UP Warriorz. Playing every match of the season so far, the tweaker has racked up an impressive economy rate of 5.81.
But spin wasn’t always her primary weapon of choice with the ball in hand.
“I feel every cricketer starts off as a medium pacer. I played U-16 for my state as a pacer and I never used to get bowling.”
It was during training for a Senior Division-level match that she attempted spin bowling, which came off quite well. This prompted her to confess to her coach that she’d rather become a spinner.
“ Body mai jaan hi nahi tha utna (I didn’t have much power in me at that time). As a pacer, 90 kmph is quite slow. But the same speed as a spinner is quite good.” Her ball to dismiss McGrath, for instance, was a 95 kmph yorker which ripped through the Australian’s off stump.
With a number of variations in her kitty, she contributed 16 wickets at an economy of just 2.99 to help Madhya Pradesh lift its first Senior Women’s ODI Trophy late last year. But she wasn’t always versatile in her bowling.
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Three years ago, Sanskriti took part in trials to be one of 24 girls who would go on to train at the then newly-founded MP State Women’s Cricket Academy.
“Her attitude and potential made us select her,” chief coach Arun Singh remembered. “At 17, the concept of fitness wasn’t there. My aim was to inculcate that in her. We also taught variations to her because if you bowl just off spin then the batters figure you out soon enough.”
From being a Mumbai Indians fan to rubbing shoulders with some of the game’s finest in the dressing room, Sanskriti is a sponge trying to absorb anything she can from her first WPL season.
“There have been a lot of learnings. The importance of discipline is one. Communicating with the media is new for me. All this will help me if I get to play at a higher level. There won’t be problems for me then.”