Jhulan Goswami is a once-in-a-generation player, leaves behind a large void: Anjum Chopra

India legend and arguably the greatest pacer to grace women’s cricket, Jhulan Goswami, bid adieu to international cricket at Lord’s. Jhulan’s farewell match and her debut game were quite similar in more ways than one. Both of these matches came against England and India won both matches with Jhulan clinching two wickets in her debut as well as in the final game.

More importantly, Jhulan scripted and conquered a highly-successful and unprecedented two-decade-long journey between those two games. On Sunday, Jhulan brought down the curtains on her career with 355 international wickets to her name — the most in the women’s game.

As the ‘Chakdaha Express’ bid farewell to the international game, her first India captain Anjum Chopra reminisced Jhulan’s debut in the 2002 ODI at Chennai and subsequent cricket journey in a conversation with Firstpost.

“I had already heard about her in 1999 or 2000 that there is this tall fast bowler from Chakdaha. I remember watching her bowl for the first time in 2000 during an inter-zonal First-Class cricket match. She had this raw pace and she was raw in every sense. Very nice, humble, very jovial,” recalled the cricketer-turned-commentator.

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