Pooja Vastrakar tries to balance the weight of expectations

Pooja Vastrakar has emerged as one of the leading all-rounders in the Indian women's cricket team.

A multi-talented cricketer

Pooja Vastrakar, in fact, started her journey as a batter, but after her coaches saw her potential, they encouraged her to bowl medium pace, and that is what got her into the Indian side.

However, after delivering a few impressive performances, she could not keep herself in the park for long periods and kept getting injured. Fortunately for her and Indian cricket, over the last couple of years, she has improved her fitness and has now emerged as one of the leading all-rounders for India.

Vastrakar has the rare ability among Indian bowlers to bowl short of length and even test the batters with bouncers. With the bat, she has the ability to clear any field, which is what India had been lacking over the past decade.

Starring in Women's T20 Challenge 

She recently put up a good show in the Women's T20 Challenge as well. Her best performance of 4 for 12 came in the opening match of the Women's T20 Challenge 2022 after Supernovas put 163 runs on the board, including a 12-ball 14 run from Pooja Vastrakar.

Vastrakar then helped rout the Trailblazers for 114 to take the team to an impressive 49-run victory. This is what the all-rounder said after receiving the player of the match award.

"Just wanted to hit the right areas with my bowling and try and get breakthroughs. Ball was coming out of my hand well during practice, so I was confident. After batting, we realised it is not the easiest surface to play, so we wanted to restrict them to a low score in the powerplay. The team bonding has been great thanks to a few practice sessions we've held together; always good to play with people from all over the world."

Hard luck

Unfortunately, she tested positive for COVID-19 right before boarding the flight for the Commonwealth games and could only be available for the knockouts.

When she finally got to bat in the competition, that too in the final, she had a lot of expectations on her shoulders of going big but wasn't able to do that and was just able to score one off five deliveries as India suffered a heartbreaking loss and returned with the silver medal.