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Kunal Pradhan on women’s cricket: To the band of believers that got us here
The march for equal rights and recognition has been longer than it ever should have been; and it continues. But how wonderful to finally turn a corner.
“The greatest cricket match that was played in this part of England was on Friday, the 26th of last month, on Gosden Common, near Guildford, between eleven maids of Bramley and eleven maids of Hambledon, all dressed in white. The Bramley maids had blue ribbons and the Hambledon maids red ribbons on their heads… The girls bowled, batted, ran and catched as well as most men could do in that game.”
– Weekly newspaper Reading Mercury; August 26, 1745
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The march for equal rights and recognition for women has been longer than it ever should have been.
Today there is universal suffrage, fan following in sport, megastar status in music and film, there are corporate leaders and world leaders, but the battle for parity continues.
One illustration of this most basic of all injustices is how we in India treated women’s cricket from the mid-1970s, when they played their first Test match, until the mid-2020s, when they suddenly became the toast of the nation on winning their first World Cup.
For these 50 years, India’s national obsession was fuelled only by the men’s team — cricket was a religion, a symbol of pride, an engine of diplomacy — even as the other national team was ignored.
For four of the last five decades, there was neither funding nor backing for women in India, and frankly in most nations, to pursue cricket as a viable professional sport. Sure, there were sometimes pats on the shoulder and some platitudes, and someone could perhaps pull out a list of Arjuna Award citations to counter the point, but women’s cricket lived in the dangerous limbo that exists between patronisation and rejection.
Not any longer.
Over the course of two nights in October-November 2025, the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai became the stage on which women’s cricket would find its rightful place.
If Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet Kaur struck blows to change the paradigm in a 339-run semi-final chase against Australia that kept the world glued to their screens, Shafali Verma was the unlikely hero with bat and ball in the final against South Africa.
The Indian women were world champions. But in the celebrations that followed, as the winning team huddled around the torchbearers of yesteryear — Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami and Anjum Chopra — a salty cocktail of sweat and tears told the tale of a relentless journey. The pioneers who started this long, lonely battle — India’s first Test captain Shanta Rangaswamy, now 71, and first ODI captain Diana Edulji, 69 — watched from the stands, smiling.
It was this small bubble of believers that had, gradually yet inexorably, made the incredible shift possible.
GOLDEN MOMENTS
Sport thrives on moments that quicken the pulse. It is not about the sheer weight of runs scored or goals struck or records obliterated. It gets its energy from teleporting us into a world of unscripted bedlam where anything is possible.
A world where Mike Powell suddenly leaps 8.95m in 1991 to upset Carl Lewis for the long-jump gold. Where Yelena Isinbayeva raises the bar to an impossible 5.05m long after securing the top spot at the Beijing Olympics. Where Diego Maradona runs past five English players to score a solo masterpiece in the 1986 World Cup, and where Lionel Messi makes an identical run for Barcelona against Getafe 21 years later. Where no one knows what will happen when two titans, Mohammad Ali and George Foreman, Rumble in the Jungle. Where Billie Jean King puts Bobby Riggs in his place in the so-called Battle of the Sexes.
The numbers tell us that Sachin Tendulkar is India’s greatest batter. But it was moments, rather than records, that made the master. A 16-year-old Sachin dancing down the track to deposit Abdul Qadir in the stands in 1989. A marauding Sachin unleashing a “desert storm” on Australia in Sharjah, in 1998. An out-of-form Sachin scoring almost entirely on the off-side for his Test best 248 not out in Sydney in 2004. And Sachin, the icon, carried on the shoulders of the team after they won the World Cup at home in 2011.
Such moments give sport context, linking it inextricably with the world we inhabit. Shorn of opportunities, this spark was what women’s cricket was missing.
ONE FOR THE AGES
In her 2018 book Free Hit: The Story of Women’s Cricket in India, journalist Suprita Das strings together anecdotes that paint a picture of how the sport was stuck in a quagmire of disinterest and apathy, treated either as a novelty item or a waste of time.
In 1973, the first women’s cricket administrator, Mahendra Kumar Sharma, for instance, tested the waters for a tournament by driving through the streets of Lucknow with a loudspeaker chanting: “Kanyaon ki cricket hogi, zaroor aaiye (Girls will play cricket, do come to watch).”
But whatever the odds, the players refused to give up: Dormitory accommodation, bring it on; shared kits, no problem; second-rate grounds, who cares; empty stands, so what. The hurdles didn’t stop Shanta Rangaswamy’s power hitting, Diana Edulji’s left-arm tweakers, Purnima Rau’s aerial shots, Anjum Chopra’s cover drives, Mithali Raj’s hunger for runs, Jhulan Goswami’s outswing, or Smriti Mandhana’s immaculate timing.
Ten years after women’s cricket came under the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), in 2017, there was a first moment of magic: Harmanpreet Kaur smashed 171 off 115 deliveries against Australia in the World Cup semi-final at Derby, forcing Indians to turn on their TVs and sing paeans on social media. Now the latest infusion at the 2025 World Cup, in front of a packed house and a record television audience, will change the story forever.
The passage at the top of this article was from the first record of any women’s cricket match ever played, chronicled by a journal in England’s Thames Valley nearly three centuries ago.
Yes, the girls still bowl, bat, run and catch as well as most men. And they no longer need to wear coloured ribbons in their hair.
(The views expressed are personal)
