CHENNAI : Imagine you are under the lid with your team requiring 12 runs off the last over on your debut. Two batters in the middle currently batting for your team have heaps of experience. You are not expecting to go out in the middle. The first ball of the over, one of them gets out, but your captain is still out there. The penultimate ball of the match, even the captain is dismissed with five runs required. The opposition is pumped and they can smell the win. This is what the situation was when Mumbai Indian’s Sajeevan Sajana sprinted out to bat at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru after Shah Rukh Khan lit up the opening ceremony of the second season of the Women’s Premier League.
However, as Khan himself declared in the 1993 movie Baazigar — Haar Kar Jitne Wale Ko Baazigar Kehte Hai (literal translation: one who wins after losing is the real gambler) — there was still one ball to go to become the ‘Baazigar’. That is exactly what Sajana did as Mumbai won by four wickets. The 29-year-old from Mananthavady, a village in the Wayanad district, took the tournament by storm with one of the best finishes the competition has seen. However, this was the reward for the blood, sweat, and tears the Kerala player had put in over the years.
“I didn’t have money to travel (for cricket). When I got selected for the district, I started earning money, Rs 150 per day. It was a big amount for me,” she said in the video posted by WPL after the match. The daughter of an autorickshaw driver father and panchayat councillor and accountant mother in Mananthavady village developed a love for the game despite her humble economic background, but she never used it as an excuse. “She always had family support and no one ever stopped her from playing cricket. But to travel for cricket every day with a lack of money from the area she comes from is in itself a challenge. But I have never seen her make any excuse for that. Knowing you are going through all the challenges and still staying motivated is a tough task,” Suman Sharma, the head coach of the Kerala women’s team, told this daily.
