\n
As Pratika moved up through the age groups, she caught the attention of former India player Deepti Dhyani, who became her coach.<\/p>\n
“I saw her play a few drives and realised she had the capabilities. Most state-level players have talent; the challenge is transforming it for professional cricket. That’s where we as coaches step in,” Deepti says.<\/p>\n
“She stood out because whenever you asked her to work on something, she would tick every box, even if you weren’t watching.”<\/p>\n
Deepti also emphasised fitness, something Pratika had embraced since childhood.<\/p>\n
“We often think gym work means building bulky muscles, but it’s really about staying injury-free. Thankfully, Pratika understood that well and worked on her fitness seriously,” says Deepti.<\/p>\n
Even as cricket became her focus, Pratika didn’t neglect her studies. She pursued a degree in psychology, which helped her understand the mental side of the game.<\/p>\n
“She was in ninth standard when she got interested in psychology, so she decided to study it in college,” says her father.<\/p>\n
“In cricket, psychology plays a major role. When you’re batting, trying to read what a bowler is thinking or why they’ve set a certain field, it helps you dissect situations better. It’s been really useful for her.”<\/p>\n
It’s that out-of-the-box thinking which gives Pratika a useful skill off the field: she can solve a Rubik’s cube.<\/p>\n
“It has an algorithm to it,” Pratika said, in a social media video. “The centre pieces don’t move, so you need to move everything around those.”<\/p>\n
Easy, or so Pratika makes it seem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Pratika moved up through the age groups, she caught the attention of former India player Deepti Dhyani, who became her coach. “I saw her play a few drives and realised she had the capabilities. Most state-level players have talent; the challenge is transforming it for professional cricket. That’s where we as coaches step in,” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21499,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21497\/revisions\/21499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}