CHENNAI: G Trisha needs no introduction. The 17-year-old cricket prodigy from Hyderabad has been making the right noises in the domestic circuit for several years now, flourishing in every stage. In November 2021, she made the headlines for leading the batting charts with 260 runs in four innings, helping India B win the U-19 One-Day Challengers.
Since then, new challenges have come up for Trisha, who has been holding one kind of bat or the other since she was three, thanks to her father Ram. He moved the family from Bhadrachalam to Hyderabad with the sole purpose of focusing on her cricket and that has been the life of his family since, with Trisha training at least over eight hours a day. It is the countless practice sessions, and tireless work ethic, which now has become muscle memory, that has helped her break through the levels way above her age.
However, having been a part of the setup for a better part of a decade now, Trisha and her father have realised that there has to be a method to the madness for her to get to dominate the next level. A method that is a lot more systematic and scientific and helps her not just with the physical aspect of her game, but her mental well-being as well.
Post the U-19 Challengers, there wasn't any tournament for a while and it was an apt time for her to work on the new approach. A normal day in Trisha's life goes like this: 6-7.45 am knocking session at Iqbal Cricket Academy in Secundrabad, followed by a high-performance session at Coaching Beyond Cricket Academy — run by former Indian men's coaches R Sridhar, Bharat Arun and Ravi Shastri — along with the Hyderabad U-19 boys. She would play a range of bowlers, take throwdowns and work on her fielding; a few hours of break at noon during lunch, then a one-on-one session with Sridhar or Parashar PB, who is the strength and conditioning coach, or Anoop Pai, who works on her technique. In the evening, she'll be working on her fitness in the gym. If she has matches to play, the schedule changes accordingly.
Being someone who has seen her since day one, Sridhar said that they wanted to give her a balance of hard work, social and recreational activities and rest. "It was too much of work, very little rest, leading to fatigue. So, we try to mix it up with other activities, making sure she lives her life outside of cricket as well," Sridhar told The New Indian Express.
"We did a biomechanical analysis and found out where she needs to improve. It's not just the skill, we wanted to improve her bat speed, and range of shots through minor adjustments. Anoop worked on her range hitting as we want her to score at least run-a-ball," he added.
And with the upcoming inaugural edition of the U-19 World Cup being conducted in the T20 format in January 2023, the emphasis on her strike-rate has gotten more significant for Trisha, who largely plays in the ‘V’ early on before trying to attack the bowlers.
"One of the things we have worked on in the last few months is trying to figure out how to have more than one scoring shot for the same delivery so that it helps me improve my attacking game," says Trisha, who has scored 134 runs in four innings in the ongoing senior women's T20 league at a strike rate of 98.52.
As a medium-pacer-turned-leggie, Trisha hardly changed her action. It essentially meant that she's similar to Rashid Khan with respect to the way she bowls, but she is just starting to work on her variations. Although Hyderabad are out of the tournament, the all-rounder did make her mark with a couple of wickets against Andhra, dismissing Sneha Deepthi for a first-ball duck.
The U-19 World Cup is still half-a-year away, but the 17-year-old said that she just wants to take one day at a time and get better as a cricketer at every opportunity she gets. “We are looking at a bigger picture and what requires to be done for her to become a complete cricketer,” Sridhar signed off.