Nicole Bolton, the former Australian women’s cricketer, revealed a shocking remark made by the former head coach, Cathyrn Fitzpatrick, about Mithali Raj during their time in the national team. The 35-year-old revealed that Cathyrn Fitzpatrick spoke to her about whether she wanted to be Mithali Raj of the Australian women’s cricket team, scoring runs at 50 strike-rate in ODIs.
This conversation with Cathyrn Fitzpatrick happened for Nicole Bolton during the early stages of her international career when she was yet to be a regular feature in the Australian cricket team. The mention of Mithali Raj and her lower strike-rate in ODIs in comparison to some of her peers was Cathyrn Fitzpatrick’s way of sending the message across to Nicole Bolton about improving her batting skills, to make the playing XI of Australia consistently.
On the Stories After Stumps podcast, the clip of which was posted by Cricket Australia on their official X account, Nicole Bolton said, “For so long, I was just trying to impress her (Cathyrn Fitzpatrick]. I was just trying to get her to see me. And, I just remember, she called me into her office to have a chat. And she was like, ‘Do you honestly want to be the Mithali Raj of the Australia Cricket Team?’ And I was like, ‘Mithali Raj?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, do you honestly want to strike at 50? It’s okay if you get 100 but the team still loses and you get 100 off 150 balls?’”
“And I was, ‘Woah, Shit! This is how Cathryn Fitzpatrick sees me. That’s not good at all. If this is how she sees me, my career is going to be pretty short-lived.’ She sort of said to me, ‘Why can’t you be like Meg Lanning or Elyse Villani? That’s how we want you to play’,” she added.
Notably, during her international career, Mithali Raj became the first woman to score 7,805 runs in 232 ODI matches at an average of 50.68, but her strike-rate numbers are not available on record. On the other side, Nicole Bolton scored 1,896 runs in 50 ODIs at an average of 41.21, while her strike-rate was 72.31.
