In a Senior Women's T20 Trophy match in October 2019, Bengal were struggling at 35/2 after 10.3 overs when a 16-year-old Richa Ghosh walked out to bat. She'd go on to smash a 36-ball 67 at the Saurashtra Cricket Stadium in Rajkot, with nine fours and two sixes to power Bengal to 136/7 – more than 100 runs scored after the 10-over mark. It was more than enough to beat Delhi that day as Bengal won by 60 runs. It is the knock, Richa believes, that played a role in her first call-up to the Indian squad at just 16. It helped her win a bet with her Bengal U19 coach, Charanjeet Singh, whom she had told at the age of 12 or 13 that she'd make it to the Indian senior squad in three years. That is the sort of talent that the powerful wicketkeeper-bat from Siliguri always possessed. It was there to see for everyone on Thursday night in Visakhapatnam, where she came into bat with her team in trouble – just like she did in Rajkot all those years ago – and smashed a 77-ball 94 to drag India to a position of relative strength, even though the night eventually ended in defeat against South Africa. And during that knock, she reminded the world of her easy power, of her ability to hold a stable base and smash the ball to all areas of the ground. "If you look at what she did against South Africa , she possesses real batsmanship quality. It is not only the hitting ability. She is a very smart cricketer. Her ability to assess, come out with a plan and execute it is pretty brilliant," RX Muralidhar – who has worked with Richa at RCB in Women's Premier League as the batting coach – told The Indian Express on Friday. "Even in T20, that's what she does. Initially, she takes some time to assess the situation and then goes big. In training, she spends hours together just hitting the ball big. After her normal routine is done (in the nets), she puts in extra time on hitting particular shots and accessing areas all over the park. Playing the ball behind the wicket, square of the wicket, scoop, and so on." Considered to be usually strong through the mid-wicket region, Richa did hit two huge sixes with slog sweep, with one travelling nearly into the stands for 80m-plus. But the rest of the wagon wheel was the perfect illustration of her all-round game. She could generate power to hit through the line which was evident when she smashed the medium pace of Tumi Sekhukhune for a flat six over mid-off. Indeed, 73% of her runs through fours and 50% of her sixes came through the offside. "That was some serious hitting," former England captain Nasser Hussain said in the mid-innings match on JioHotstar. "She has that brute force and muscle, Richa Ghosh. But she also has the technique for hitting. She doesn't overhit, she holds her body shape and trusts her position. She trusts keeping her head down, hits through the line. She is also not one-dimensional: she can hit it to deep mid-wicket, she hits straight, she hits over extra-cover, and there is the reverse-sweep. And she hit a nearly perfect yorker over cover-point." Behind this ability to access 360 degrees on the pitch – still a rare quality in the highest level of the women's game – is understanding the science of power-hitting. "There is science to it, it is not just about strength, it is just not about going in and swinging the bat. It is about how well and how efficiently you can use your power that you generate, pass it through the body and through the hand on to the bat," Muralidhar explains, adding that Richa – while naturally blessed with strength – is also 'very inquisitive' about getting better. While the likes of Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Ellyse Perry – to mention just a few elite batters in the women's game who are good at hitting sixes – depend on timing and bat-swing, Richa is a new-age batter who can hit pace or spin from different lengths for flat sixes. "As you keep doing more of it, the external feedback from the coaches and the internal feedback that you get from your body helps you start getting better," Muralidhar said. "You might be a strong person and hit the ball powerfully. But what is needed at this level is consistency. That is where you need science. That is where repetition comes in. That has improved significantly in the last couple of years." At RCB – where Richa was a key cog in the title-winning second edition – she got the chance to tune her game further. Outside of her practice time at the nets, Richa spent a lot of additional time in open-field hitting sessions with Muralidhar. "When you have a full ground to your disposal for training, that is when you see the ball travel, you get the visual feedback to your own system. 'Okay fine, I was able to hit this particular ball this long. So what was the position that I was in? What was the mindset at that instance? So your body is internalising that (better than in nets). It's like one of my favorite quotes. If you know how to make tea, you can make tea even in Antarctica. It is about understanding the process." The role a heartbreak played Interestingly enough, Richa's drive to be an elite power-hitter came as a consequence of a heartbreak, when she was part of the T20 World Cup team that lost in the final at a packed MCG in 2020, thanks to Alyssa Healy's blistering 75 off 39 balls with 7 fours and 5 sixes. "When I was young, I didn't think that much specifically about power hitting, because to me it was natural. My game was different from then, I just knew that I have to hit fours and sixes. But gradually, when I see the Australians, they also stick to the basics, while also hitting boundaries," Richa told the RCB Podcast. "The T20 World Cup (2020) was actually a big turning point for me, which made me realise I should work more on power hitting. If you watch the World Cup final the way Healy came in and smashed all those boundaries. I got even more motivated. Ek ladki aake aise khel rahi hai, toh mein kyun aisa nahi maar sakta udar? (A woman is able to hit like that, then why can't I?" Five years into her international career, Richa has certainly lived up to that expectation from herself.
