Mithali Raj’s husband has been a topic of discussion among fans for years. The former captain of India’s women’s cricket team, widely regarded as the greatest player in the sport’s history, retired in June 2022 after a 23-year international career and has remained unmarried throughout.
She has addressed the subject directly in interviews more than once, and in 2024 found herself at the center of marriage rumors involving fellow cricketer Shikhar Dhawan, rumors Dhawan himself dismissed as baseless.
Mithali Raj Biography
She was born on December 3, 1982, in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, into a Tamil family. Her father, Dorai Raj, served as a Warrant Officer in the Indian Air Force.
This career instilled the discipline and structure Mithali has credited as foundational to her own approach to cricket. Her mother, Leela Raj, managed the household.
As a young girl, Mithali Raj trained in Bharatanatyam, a classical form of Indian dance. She appeared genuinely bound for a career in the arts before a coach recognized raw athletic talent in her and redirected her fully toward cricket, a pivot that shaped the rest of her life.
She was educated at Keyes High School for Girls in Hyderabad and went on to Kasturba Gandhi Junior College for Women in Secunderabad, both all-girls institutions.
She and her older brother took up cricket together as children, with her family’s early encouragement playing a significant role in her development, and she began playing seriously around age 10.
Career
Mithali Raj made her international debut in 1999 as a teenager. She went on to captain the Indian women’s national cricket team from 2004 to 2022, one of the longest leadership tenures in the sport’s history.
In 2002, at age 19, she set what was then the record for the highest individual score in Women’s Test cricket with an innings of 214.
She became the first Indian cricketer, across either the men’s or women’s game, to score a century in a Women’s World Cup match, and went on to become the all time leading run scorer in women’s One Day International cricket, finishing with 7,805 ODI runs and more than 10,800 runs across all three international formats combined, a record that stood as the highest aggregate in the history of women’s international cricket.
She also became the first woman to record seven consecutive ODI half-centuries and the first to reach 2,000 runs in T20 International cricket.
She led India to the final of the 2017 Women’s Cricket World Cup, one of the tournament’s most significant moments for the sport’s visibility in India.
She captained the side again at the 2022 World Cup in New Zealand before announcing her retirement from all forms of international cricket on June 8, 2022, sharing a lengthy note on Instagram thanking the BCCI and her fans for more than two decades of support.
Life After Retirement
Mithali Raj did not disappear from cricket after retiring as a player. In 2023, she took on her first mentorship role, joining the Gujarat Giants for the Women’s Premier League, an Adani Group-owned franchise, where she worked alongside captain Beth Mooney and coach Rachael Haynes to guide a new generation of players rather than compete herself.
She has also worked as a commentator, including coverage of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup. She has remained involved in efforts around India’s broader Women’s World Cup ambitions, continuing to shape the sport from outside the boundary rope.
Mithali Raj Husband
Mithali Raj has spoken about her decision to remain unmarried on multiple occasions, most notably in a 2018 interview with Mid-Day, where she said plainly that marriage used to cross her mind a long time back, when she was very young, but that it no longer does now that she sees what married people actually go through, adding that she is very happy being single.
In a separate interview, she offered a more personal reflection, saying she does not get the same kind of public attention that male cricketers receive from female fans, a comment that read as both a light-hearted observation and a genuine reflection on how differently men’s and women’s cricket are treated in India.
In that same interview, she acknowledged that she had been in relationships in the past, without naming anyone or offering further detail, making clear that her single status was a choice.
She has also said that her openness to marriage was never fully closed, telling interviewers that whether she continued playing cricket after marriage would depend on her physical fitness and the level of support she received from her family and in-laws, a hypothetical she never had to test given she remained single throughout her playing career.
The Shikhar Dhawan Rumors
In May 2024, reports began circulating that Mithali Raj was set to marry fellow Indian cricketer Shikhar Dhawan, the veteran left-handed opening batsman, with speculation intensifying after commentators connected the timing to Dhawan’s recent divorce from his ex-wife, Ayesha Mukherjee.
The rumor spread quickly across Indian entertainment and sports media. Still, Dhawan addressed it directly and dismissed the claims as baseless, and neither he nor Mithali has confirmed any relationship between them at any point.
Mithali Raj’s Net Worth
Her net worth is $3 million, which is mostly from her cricket career and part business.
Mithali is spending more of her wealth on her family as she isn’t married or dating.
Her life playing cricket has been amazing, with so much already on her name in money and records.
She was earning a massive amount of pay before calling her career to an end on an international level.
She also still has several brand deals to her name that still make her heavy pay.
Mithali Raj is more focused on building talents and also making sure she takes things slow since retirement.
