Shafali Verma, a diamond polished by a cricket-loving father who knew what real jewels looked like – like, his daughter | Cricket News
“Shafali, you are from Rohtak, it’s where pehelwans are born … How did you venture into this world of cricket? .. You never went to an akhada?” Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s questions to Shafali Verma made the World Cup final’s Player of the Match, go down the proverbial memory lane. More precisely, in her case, the Sunaar Gully, where a failed cricketer turned-jeweler wanted his children to be what he couldn’t. “My father wanted to be a cricketer but he couldn’t. So he wanted his chhavi (reflection) in his children,” Shafali told the PM. It was a short answer that didn’t do justice to the efforts of an obsessive father who had seen his sporting ambitions die, but ensured his dreams were reborn. Shafali knew there was a time and place to chronicle a father’s contribution and the tightly-scheduled felicitation of the World Cup winning team at PM’s home wasn’t one. Anyways, even the gist of her ‘believe it or not’ fairytale would have taken all day. Here’s a tip off to the Bollywood and …
