Mithali Raj on India's Rise and Liberty Cricket Live Scores Fandom

Published 2026-11-07 · By Sakshi Patel (WPL & Franchise League Columnist · New Delhi Desk)

Seventeen years old, Mithali Raj walked out at Lord's with the scoreboard reading 47 for 2 and 84 overs still to come. The new ball did the talking. She batted till stumps, unbeaten on 91, and India lost that 2005 final by nine runs—but nobody in the dressing room argued about the margin. They argued about the crowd, thin as it was, counting every run out loud like each one might disappear.

That afternoon at Lord's is the hinge of everything Mithali Raj talked about this week. When I asked what has actually changed in the women's game, she did not reach for nostalgia. "The pressure moved," she said. "Earlier it was just getting picked. Now it is performing in front of a scoreboard that never sleeps."

She is right, and the dressing rooms know it. At the Chinnaswamy in Bengaluru, the evening humidity still arrives after 8:30 PM IST and the dew factor turns a hard length skiddy; at Brabourne in Mumbai, the sticky red-soil track under lights rewards the batter who waits and punishes the one who rushes. Those old surfaces taught this generation patience. The new surfaces—flat, fast, broadcast-ready—teach something else entirely: boundary-percentage. A young Indian batter now calculates not just survival but the gap, ball by ball.

The Brabourne Humidity and the Scoreboard That Never Sleeps

Walk into any state-association net session now and the first sound is not bat on ball. It is a phone. "What did liberty cricket live scores say at the fall of the third wicket?" a 19-year-old asks her coach, mid-over, without looking up from the screen. The Ranji grind still exists and is growing for the women too, but the feedback loop has shrunk to seconds. A mistake in a domestic one-dayer is clipped, posted, dissected by morning. Nobody in the dugout bought that excuse then; nobody buys it now.

Coaches in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru say the same thing in different accents: young Indian players handle scoreboard pressure differently because they have never known a world without one. The fear used to be about being dropped from the squad. The fear now is being timid on a stage that is finally full. Those are two very different anxieties.

What the WPL Did to the Nets

The WPL did not merely add money. It added a matchup. In net sessions at the NCA in Bengaluru, you will see a young Indian batter face an overseas fast bowler bowling into the pitch at 135 kph, then turn around and play a domestic spinner on a rank turner in the same afternoon. That is the Impact Player gamble in miniature. Coaches call it range training. Players call it Tuesday.

The numbers back the noise. Match-night traffic logs compiled for this column at casinocome.com show India women's fixtures now holding the 8:30–11:30 PM IST window that used to belong only to men's ODIs, with spikes during the death overs that rival the men's home bilaterals. The audience is not waiting for the morning paper anymore; it is refreshing between overs.

• Selection is no longer a one-line phone call; it is a data room plus a gut feel.
• Net sessions now include "pressure overs" where a coach stands at the rope and shouts the required rate.
• State pathways matter again, because the domestic structure feeds the national side directly.

“We didn’t ask for sympathy; we asked for a scoreboard. Now the scoreboard is a phone screen in every hand.”

The Next Aspiration: Owning the Big Stage

Mithali's wish for the future is simple and, in her words, unfinished. She wants the next lot to stop apologising for taking space. "Play the shot," she said. "If it goes over the rope, the stadium will remember. If it doesn't, bowl the next ball." The old argument was about whether women's cricket deserved a place. The new argument is about who owns the biggest one.

From Lord's 2005 to the WPL final under lights, the arc is not a straight line. It has rain delays, near-empty stands, selection debates in Delhi corridors, and net sessions that run late because the floodlights at Kotla stay on. But the direction is unmistakable. When the next India batter walks out, she is not walking into a favour. She is walking into a broadcast.

— Sakshi Patel, WPL & Franchise League Columnist, filing from the New Delhi desk for LibertyCricket.

Related coverage

• IPL 2026: 134 Matches, New Ball Biases, and the Jaipur Desh
• Visakhapatnam Swap: Why the Spin Economy Split Beats the Pace Bias

Official LibertyCricket Daily Update · 2026-11-07

Liberty Cricket Live Scores — Verified Instant App & Live Hub

Updated 2026-11-07 · Instant Rupee Deposits & 60s Withdrawals · 24/7 Support.

Access Official LibertyCricket Portal →