On Saturday, she became the youngest Indian to hit an international half-century

Annesha Ghosh10-Nov-2019There’s something about sports prodigies. For a little while, they can make even the biggest superstars look rather ordinary. Remember Wimbledon? Cori “Coco” Gauff, the 15-year-old American tennis phenom, knocked over five-time champion Venus Williams, once a teenage sensation herself.Gauff doesn’t quite get cricket, but if she wants to, there’s a fellow 15-year-old making the game look ridiculously easy. Shafali Verma, the youngest Indian woman to play T20I cricket, is now the youngest Indian to make an international half-century. And her 49-ball 73 against West Indies was completely headline-grabbing.In a very Gauff-like way, Verma broke into the limelight by upstaging her senior, and fellow half-centurion Smriti Mandhana, during a record 143-run partnership, her strokeplay nothing short of fearless.There was a moment in the 11th over when she lofted wristspinner Afy Fletcher down the ground and Mandhana was so enamoured with the strike that as she reached the keeper’s end, she raised her arms – that’s a cue for Gauff – prompting the umpire to signal a six. Except there appeared to be a little problem.Natasha McLean, the fielder at long-on who had dropped Mandhana on 43 and 59, had got under the ball and swatted it back into play forcing the Indian batters to hurry up and complete their single. Eventually, though, it was revealed that McLean was standing well beyond the boundary, with both feet on the ground, when she had attempted the save.It was the third six – and ninth boundary – of the night for Verma but it wasn’t the first time she had rattled an opposition. Back in May, she took apart some of the most established bowlers in the women’s game, with a breezy 34 against the Mandhana-led Trailblazers in the Women’s T20 Challenge.Still only 15, and playing only her second international series – first on foreign soil – Verma’s innings was so blinding that Mandhana’s own 46-ball 67 became a bit of a footnote, even though the senior opener had struck 11 boundaries with trademark flair.The buzz around 15-year old Shafali Verma keeps growing•IndianCricketTeam/InstagramPart of the reason for that was how Mandhana benefited from four reprieves – three dropped chances and a missed stumping – but the bigger contrast was the dearth of sixes in her innings, thrown into sharp relief by the four dismissive ones clubbed by Verma. Before this innings, all of Mandhana’s nine T20I half-centuries, save for the first that she struck at age 18, featured at least one six. Verma, meanwhile, walked back with twice the number of sixes she had hit in her four previous T20Is combined.This is not the first time that Mandhana, the de facto ambassador of the current pack of prodigies in the Indian T20I side who has collected runs, awards and rewards aplenty since her international debut at age 16, has played second fiddle to a younger wunderkind. Since the debut of the now 19-year-old Jemimah Rodrigues in February last year, Mandhana, the lynchpin of India’s batting across formats for the best part of the past two years, finally has some breathing space. And that is a good thing.”We worked hard on our opening pair,” Harmanpreet Kaur, the India T20I captain, said after the game. “We did well today, especially Shafali Verma because is young and she is giving so much contribution to the team [already], playing like a senior player. Smriti Mandhana also played really well, both of their contribution played a big role for us [today].”On Saturday, Rodrigues did not even have to bat and that is a rare occurrence indeed. She could just sit back and watch as a 15-year old bettered what she had done exactly a year ago and break the record for India’s highest partnership in women’s T20Is.But here’s the thing. The initial excitement at the appearance of a prodigy immediately gives way to expectation. Both the team and its fans will want plenty more from Verma – and even Rodrigues for that matter – especially with a T20 World Cup coming up in February-March. If both teens are able to get going on the same day, even a hundred from Mandhana, the current holder of ICC Women’s Cricketer of Year award, in a winning cause might just be spoken of as an afterthought as it was on Saturday.