Veteran Sushila excited to finally fulfill her WC dream

The player from Manipur led the junior women's team to a bronze in the World Cup in 2013, was part of the squad that won bronze in the Asian Games in Incheon in 2014, impressed one and all with her performance in the 2014-15 World League Semifinals, led the side during the 2016 Olympics in Rio and also played a big role as the team finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics last year. Despite achieving so much, she has never played a senior World Cup. When the event was last held in 2018 in London, she had failed to recover from an operation to the right knee to mend the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) that got torn ahead of the 2016 Olympics.

"I got injured in February 2016 and went to see Dr. Anant Joshi. He told me that even Yuvraj Singh and Dhanraj Pillay had played big tournaments with torn ACL," said Sushil during an interaction with TOI from the Netherlands.

"Taking confidence from what the doctor said, I played the Olympics with the injury. I used to spend almost four to five hours in the gym and underwent a lot of rehabilitation. And once the Olympics got over, I came back and underwent the surgery in September." Following the operation, she made it back to the squad in 2017 but her return was shortlived as the pain came back to haunt her and she had to miss the Asian Games as well as the World Cup.

"It was a very difficult time and I had to depend on myself a lot. I had to self-motivate myself and to do that I used to watch a lot of motivational videos. I kept telling myself that I would be able to play again," added Sushila.

And she did just that. She made it back to the squad and has been a regular in the team since 2019. And now in a week's time she is all set to play her maiden World Cup when India face off