Indian women cricketer Sushma Verma, who has played 38 ODIs, 19 T20Is and a solitary Test, may not have huge numbers at the international level, but there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Apart from being fit as a fiddle, she has lightning-fast hands. There’s very little room for error whenever she’s behind the stumps, waiting for the batter to make an error. In the 2017 ICC Women’s World Cup, she had the most dismissals to her name. Her scalps were almost double than that of Australian veteran Alyssa Healy, who had a tally of eight.
After the World Cup, the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HCA) also named a pavilion after Sushma at the Gumma stadium in her hometown Shimla. Though she hasn’t donned the blue jersey in the last two years, she hasn’t gone out of the radar by any means.
Last year in September, Sushma was picked in the Indian squad for the West Indies tour and soon she became the second-highest run-scorer in the senior T20 competition in domestic cricket. She also impressed one and all in last year’s Women’s T20 Challenged where she played for Mithali Raj-led Velocity.
In the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Sushma is quite busy as she has been engaging herself in household chores. During this while, the dextrous wicketkeeper revealed that Australian legend Adam Gilchrist was her inspiration while growing up.
“I didn’t watch anyone’s videos much. When you are a player, your coach comes and tells you about the nuances and then you get to know about the techniques. Sometimes, even without proper techniques, you get the desired results. I used to like watching Adam Gilchrist, especially how he kept to Shane Warne and effected stumpings off his bowling down the leg side.
“It’s after I got to know about the realities about wicketkeeping that I started watching carefully, his hand movements, his crouching and standing positions while wicketkeeping. I didn’t intend to learn from them, it’s only that I used to enjoy watching them,” Sushma was quoted as saying in Crictracker.
When the Shimla-born cricketer was asked to name one current cricketer and Bollywood star, who would like to take a selfie with, Sushma went with Australian women’s cricket team’s skipper Meg Lanning, India men’s cricket team’s opening batsman Rohit Sharma and film actor Akshay Kumar.
“It’s tough to pick one. I generally take selfies with the team. I admire Meg Lanning a lot, so maybe her. And from men’s cricket, it will be Rohit Sharma. From Bollywood, it’s Akshay Kumar. I’m a huge fan of him, as a person. He is intelligent, humble and a perfect icon,” the wicket-keeper added.
During the interview, Sushma also revealed that being a hardcore ‘Pahari’ she loves trekking.
“I’m not a beach girl, I don’t like water and I don’t know how to swim either. In Himachal, it’s easy to go for trekking and I’m used to it.”
