On Mithali Raj’s walk off into the sunset and Virender Sehwag’s spiritual successor

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Editor's note: A day after the previous edition of this newsletter was published, one of the very few Indian cricketers I respect walked off, with characteristic lack of fuss, into the sporting sunset. It is not just that she accomplished so much. Or that she—and another of my cricketing heroes, Jhulan Goswami—played nursemaid and den mother to at least two generations of emerging talents. It is all that, of course, but it is more—it is the sort of person, the sort of human being Mithali Dorai Raj is. The charisma, the grace on and off the field, the easy assurance and, above all, the sense of self—a mindset that prompted her, when asked to name her favourite cricketer, to respond: Why? When you interview a male cricketer, do you ask him who his favourite woman cricketer is? If there is one image from her two-and-a-half-decade-long career that I will cherish for as long as memory lasts, it is of that iconic moment when Mithali, padded up and waiting to go in at number three in a World Cup game, sat just outside …