Sixteen-Year-Old's 10-Wicket Haul In One Day Match Creates History

16-year-old medium-pacer Kashvee Gautam, who hails from Chandigarh, has created history by bagging all the 10 wickets in a match against Arunachal Pradesh in the ongoing Women's U-19 One-Day Trophy. With this, she has become the first woman in India to have taken all 10 wickets in limited-overs cricket. In her previous match of the series, Gautam had taken a seven-wicket haul.

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The teenager says that all-round cricketer Jhulan Goswami is her inspiration. She watches her videos to learn techniques that have helped her immensely in the field. In this match too, she tried to bowl wicket-to-wicket which she had learned from a video of Goswami. She says, "Her (Jhulan Goswami's) height helps her extract a lot of bounce, but I am not as tall as her. So I rely on my accuracy, which is my biggest strength."

Six wickets of the ten in the Tuesday match were leg before wicket, while the rest were clean bowled. Kashvee also claimed a hat-trick.

"I am a natural in-swing bowler and that's why most of my wickets are either leg before the wicket or bowled. My aim is to complete the season with 100 wickets," said the cricket champ in an interview after the match. She feels that on taking the wicket of a boy while playing with them, they are shut down forever. "They will never try to bully you or pass comments like this game is not for girls.  They'll never be able to underestimate the mettle of girls in this sport," says she, further adding, "I really enjoy bamboozling them in the practice matches." As per a report by The Times of India, she doesn't like to bowl to fellow female cricketers in her academy at the Government Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 26, in Chandigarh.

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Six wickets of the ten in the Tuesday match were leg before wicket, while the rest were clean bowled. Kashvee also claimed a hat-trick. The Chandigarh team was chasing a modest total of 186 runs and won the match by a whopping 161 runs after the exemplary bowler single-handedly swept Arunachal Pradesh batswomen out of the field in just 29 deliveries.

Her coach for the past four years, Nagesh Kumar could not attend the match but was delighted to know that she had also scored 49 runs in Chandigarh's innings. Extremely proud of his student, he said, "She is a natural talent. She was picked for Punjab at the age of 13. She still doesn't want to practice with girls. She has got a very good inswinger and this is the reason why 49 out of her 63 wickets are either leg before the wicket or clean bowled."

Kashvee is currently the leading wicket-taker in the women's U-23 One-day trophy. She has bagged 63 wickets in this season, so far.

Kashvee has been playing for three years now. She played her debut match in the Punjab U-19 when she was just thirteen years old. Former Punjab Ranji Trophy cricketer, Sanjay Dhull was the first one to spot her while she was playing gully cricket and contacted Kumar to train her.

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Kashvee is currently the leading wicket-taker in the women's U-23 One-day trophy, being held in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh. She has bagged 63 wickets in this season, so far. At a recent U-23 one day tournament, Chandigarh qualified for knockouts by winning all its Plate Group league matches. Kashvee took 31 wickets in the nine games she bowled in. In this current tournament, she already has 18 wickets in her name in merely six matches.

Image Credit: The Indian Express

Saavriti is an intern with SheThePeople.TV.