Mumbai Indians skipper Harmanpreet Kaur alongside along with her teammates, crew workers and crew proprietor Nita Ambani with the Women’s Premier League 2023 trophy at Brabourne Stadium, in Mumbai.
| Photo Credit: ANI
I got here throughout a bunch of younger women — a French translator, a make-up artist and a home-maker — at the Cricket Club of India (CCI) in Mumbai shortly after the last of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) final month. They have been blissful: their crew, Mumbai Indians, had simply gained the inaugural version of the WPL. Though they comply with cricket, it was the first time that they have been watching women’s cricket. They aren’t alone. The WPL has created a fan base of tens of millions for women’s cricket in India, going by the eyeballs that the WPL attracted for over three weeks in March.
Not that women’s cricket wasn’t widespread in India earlier than the WPL. I keep in mind reporting on an India-Australia Women’s ODI sequence earlier than a full home at the Reliance Cricket Stadium in Vadodara 5 years in the past. The Hindu had printed the full scoreboard together with the match report at a time when women’s cricket acquired little area in the media. But the WPL has reworked women’s cricket. By the time the WPL participant public sale was performed in Mumbai in February, the Indian media had woken up to women’s cricket. Like the venues — the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai and the D.Y. Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai — the press containers too have been crowded for the WPL matches, which was not the case earlier.
It is certainly good to see our feminine cricketers getting their due. Listening to their life tales has been an interesting expertise over the previous couple of years. They aren’t simply fantastic cricketers, however fantastic women as effectively. For occasion, one is unlikely to meet a extra humble star in any area than Ellyse Perry, the Australian all-rounder who has gained eight cricket World Cups and scored a aim in a soccer World Cup. New Zealand’s Sophie Devine has a superb sense of humour. Her recognition rose sharply in India after her gorgeous knock (99 off 36 balls) towards Royal Challengers Bangalore. When I requested the women at the CCI about their highlights of the WPL, they referred to that innings. They additionally advised me about the Indian gamers they admired, resembling Harleen Deol. The dialog jogged my memory of my interview with Smriti Mandhana. The goddess of the off-side — to borrow and barely change an expression that Rahul Dravid used to describe Sourav Ganguly — had advised me that she was blissful to discover that folks had begun to give a reputation to the Indian feminine cricketer: earlier, it was the lady who bowled left-arm spin, now it was Radha Yadav. Our feminine cricketers are actually mobbed, have an enormous following on social media and appeared always in ads throughout the WPL.
Shubhangi Kulkarni, the former Indian captain whose leg-spin helped the Indian women rating their first ever Test victory (towards the West Indies in 1976), by no means had experiences like these. Not that she complains. Last 12 months, once I went to Pune to cowl the Women’s T20 Challenge — the precursor to the WPL —I met her. We have been speaking on the telephone for years; she is articulate and pleasant. We met at her store, Sunny’s Sports Boutique, which she arrange together with Sunil Gavaskar and former Baroda cricketer Jairaj Mehta. Sitting at the money counter, she advised me at size about the early days of women’s cricket in India, when gamers like her travelled on unreserved train compartments and spent from their very own pockets. The prospects who got here there to purchase cricket tools in all probability had no concept that they have been interacting with a former India captain. A little bit later, we have been joined by her India teammate, Nilima Jogalekar, who advised me about the first prize she acquired from cricket. It was a glucose biscuit.
ajithkumar.pk@thehindu.co.in
