Years ago, when the Baghajatin Cricket Coaching Centre in Siliguri had organised a friendly match between its students, they found themselves short of a wicketkeeper. Coach Gopal Saha, with his sharp eye for talent, looked around and made an unlikely choice.
Saha handed a pair of padded gloves to his only girl student and asked her to stand behind the stumps. That was the first time a 10-year-old Richa Ghosh positioned herself behind the wickets—unaware the position she took that day would one day make her a world champion, as part of the ICC Women’s World Cup-winning Indian team.
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Saha remembers the moment vividly. “Richa was no older than 10,” he says, his voice softening with nostalgia. “There were no other girls on the field in those days. She was the only one—brave enough to take the blows and still smile.”
Richa had been visiting the Baghajatin camp since she was just four, clinging to the fingers of her father, Manabendra Ghosh—a former all-rounder and cricket enthusiast himself—as they walked th
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