A good showing in Australia and a brilliant women's Senior Challenger Trophy in 2021, where she led the India D side into the final, helped propel Pooja Vastrakar into the ODI World Cup squad in New Zealand in March 2022.
The 22-year old all-rounder, who has shades of Hardik Pandya in her according to Mithali Raj, is an exciting cricketer with handy hitting skills and a solid bouncer that can test the very best. The questions, though, revolve around her fitness and consistency.
Prone to injuries, Vastrakar had a major blow early in her career with an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear. But her grit to fight through it and make a solid return saw her win a central contract in 2018.
As someone who built her game in street cricket in Madhya Pradesh, Vastrakar's tenacity stands out. She played with the boys in her street before moving to the Mahatma Gandhi stadium nets where she was spotted by a coach and joined the Gulmohar Cricket Academy run by Ashutosh Srivastava, a BCCI level-1 coach.
Her formative years saw her taking a liking to batting — and it's probably no surprise that her favourite batter is Virender Sehwag — but she later developed into a bowling all-rounder with her role as the third seamer in the Indian line-up often being promising.
As someone who understands her game and finds ways to sharpen it, Vastrakar picked on every opportunity. A good example of this was narrated by her to ESPNCricinfo in an interview as an 18-year old.
"When I went to the NCA for an Under-19 camp in 2015, the wicket at the end was quite green. I had read two months earlier that (Suresh) Raina had been struggling against the bouncer, and must have been at the NCA to work on that. I wondered if it was the same wicket where he had honed his game against the bouncer. The ball was rising nicely, so I thought, 'All right, let me try out a bouncer here'. Then even on flat wickets I started bowling it. In the domestic games, I started bowling one almost every over, first or second ball," Vastrakar said then.
The bouncer became a major weapon in her armoury and she wasn't hesitant to dish it out despite her injury history. With her pace getting better after the ACL tear, Vastrakar's ability to hit the hard lengths and give the ball a solid hit made her an enticing limited-overs prospect.
The pandemic put a halt to her efforts in making a strong comeback, and she did not find her way back in until the England tour in 2021 where she played the one-off Test and one ODI. The turning point, though, was the tour of Australia later that year.
She took four wickets in the one-off Test after finishing as India's joint-leading wicket-taker in the ODIs with four scalps. In the third ODI that Indi won, Vastrakar restricted Australia with three key wickets, that of Ellyse Perry, top-scorer Ashleigh Gardner and Tahlia McGrath.
She also made a strong impression as a late-order finisher in the T20Is, starring with a 26-ball 37 not out in the second T20I where India were struggling at 61/6 when she walked in and eventually made 118/9.
She carried the form into the Challenger Trophy where was captain of the India D side. Her stunning run-a-ball 96 in the match against India A in the preliminary stages of the tournament helped her side make it to the finals of the tournament. Although they lost the final, Vastrakar's all-round showing did not go unnoticed.
She finished the tournament with 161 runs, the fourth-most by anyone, at an average of 53.6 and strike-rate of 98.7 and also picked up five wickets including a 3/37. The performances helped her win a place in the tour of New Zealand and the World Cup squad, but her two appearances in New Zealand in the ODIs were far from inspiring.
The lack of consistency has affected her game before, but now more than ever India need Pooja Vastrakar to step up and fill the all-rounder's role. With Richa Ghosh finding her feet as a finisher, Vastrakar will be backed to aid her in the job while also partnering the likes of Jhulan Goswami, Renuka Singh and Meghna Singh with the ball.
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