File photo of Mithali Raj.
Indian women's cricket team veteran Mithali Raj reached a special career milestone on Friday when the 38-year-old female cricketer became the first Indian player and second overall to score 10,000 international runs. Mithali achieved the milestone when she reached the 35-run mark during India vs South Africa third ODI in Lucknow on Friday.
England's Charlotte Edwards was the first woman player to reach the milestone in international cricket. Mithali now needs further 299 runs to surpass the Englishwoman as the highest run-getter in the history of women's international cricket.
Mithali, however, couldn't celebrate the day with style as the batter got out after adding another run to her 36-run innings. Mithali is also the highest run-getter in ODIs at 6974 after the innings and is further 36 runs short of becoming the first player to score 7000 runs in the format. Apart from that, she has 2364 runs to her name in T20 format while 634 runs came off her bat in 10 Test matches.
In the match, she forged a 77-run stand with Punam Raut for the third wicket after India were in trouble at one point at 64/2 after sent in to bat first by Proteas.
At the time of writing this report, India were consolidating on the Raut-Mithali stand with 160/3 in the 34th over. Raut was also inching closer to her century as she was not out on 77 runs ( off 107 balls) with Harmanpreet Kaur (4 not out) at the other end.
