Renuka Singh Thakur (cricketer)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Renuka Singh Thakur

• Renuka Singh Thakur is an Indian woman cricketer. She plays for the Himachal Pradesh women’s cricket team. In the 2019-20 Senior Women’s One Day League, she took 23 wickets of the opponent team and became the leading wicket-taker of the Indian cricket team. In 2022, Renuka Singh Thakur played for India in Women’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand.

• Renuka Singh Thakur’s father died in 1999, and he worked in the Himachal Pradesh Irrigation and Public health department at Rohru. In a conversation with a media house, her mother, Sunita Thakur, stated that in 2000, she (Sunita) started working in the Himachal Pradesh Irrigation and Public health department as a class IV employee. She further added that when Renuka was a little child, she started showing interest in playing cricket at her village ground near the Kundi Nullah in Rohru. Sunita Thakur said,
  

  My husband wanted both his kids to play sport and see them doing the country proud. After he died due to an illness, it was tough phase for the family. But I never stopped my son and daughter to play any sport. While I used to work at Rohru, Ritika would spend her time playing cricket with her elder brother Vinod and his friends at the village ground. Sometimes, she would go to other villages to play cricket. “

• In 2009, Renuka Singh Thakur enrolled herself at Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association’s women’s residential academy in Dharmshala. Her uncle, Bhupender Singh Thakur, motivated her to play cricket professionally. Bhupendra Singh was then a physical education teacher at Government College in Shimla.

• Later, Renuka Singh Thakur played for the Himachal Pradesh Under 16 and Under 19 teams.

• In 2019, Renuka Singh Thakur was selected by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for a women’s one-day match. In the same year, she was chosen for India’s women’s team for its Australia tour. Renuka Singh Thakur was also selected for the teams’ matches against Bangladesh, Thailand, and India B. In four matches, she took three wickets.

• In a conversation with a media house, her coach Pawan Sen stated that Renuka Singh Thakur took three wickets in a U-19 match against Karnataka; she played for Himachal Pradesh.

  

• In the BCCI Senior Women’s one-day trophy match, in March 2020, Renuka Singh Thakur took nine wickets against Australia.

  

• Former Indian cricketer Zaheer Khan and Punjab cricketer Harpreet Dhillon are her cricket idols.

• In 2021, Renuka Singh Thakur joined the railways’ job, and in August 2021, she made her T20 debut in the Indian women’s cricket team and played a cricket series against Australia.

• In 2021, when Renuka Singh Thakur was selected for the Indian cricket team for the T20I cricket series in Australia, she stated in a conversation with a media house that her father was a very big fan of cricket, and he named her elder brother after his favourite cricketer Vinod Kambli. Renuka Singh Thakur said,
  

  It’s an emotional day for me and I cannot describe the feeling of being selected. My father loved cricket like anything and had named my elder brother Vinod after his favourite cricketer Vinod Kambli.”

  Renuka Singh Thakur added that her father died when she was three years old, and her mother took the whole responsibility of the family. She said,

  Her father reportedly worked at Himanchal Pradesh Irrigation and Public Health department at Rohru before he died in 1999. After that Singh’s mother Sunita became the breadwinner for the family.”

  

• In January 2022, Renuka Singh Thakur was chosen to play the Women’s Cricket World Cup in New Zealand for the Indian women’s cricket team. On 18 February 2022, she marked her Women’s One Day International (WODI) debut against New Zealand.

• Renuka Singh Thakur remains very active on various social media platforms. She is followed by more than 22k people on Instagram. She often posts her pictures and videos on social media.

• In February 2023, she was sold to Royal Challengers Bangalore for Rs 1.5 crore in the inaugural WPL auction. ^[2]NDTV