Shafali Verma struggled to hold back her tears when she recalled the time she got dropped from the Indian team for the tour of Australia in November.

The announcement of the squad has not been easy for the 20-year-old Shafali, as her father had faced a heart attack a couple days prior to this announcement.

Since her family was already going through a rough time, she did not want to make the situation even worse, and hence decided to keep the news hidden from her father for a week, even though he is her go-to-person for all the topics.

'It's not easy to get over it. I didn't want to reveal because my father had a heart attack about two days before I got dropped from the team. I hid the news from him till he got better. He was in the hospital. I told him a week later,' Shafali stated.

Once he came to know about the news, Sanjeev Verma, her father, did not even give himself any time to recover. As the Senior Women's one day Trophy is around the corner, Sanjeev began taking his daughter to practice.

Sanjeev was Shafali's first coach, who used to wake up at 5 in the morning and took his daughter around the neighbourhood in search of empty patches in order to train her. Now, once again, he has ensured that his daughter gets back on her feet as soon as possible.