Cricket is religion! Sachin Tendulkar is the Ultimate God! Sourav Ganguly is ‘the God of the off-side!’ We eat, drink and sleep cricket! Sunil Gavaskar is the Little Master! Rahul Dravid is The Wall! Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the Captain Supercool! Yuvraj Singh is the Style Icon! Virender Sehwag is the Master Blaster! Harbhajan Singh is the Turbanator! And the list of ‘Indian Earthly Gods’ goes on and on and on!
Cricket is the most popular game in India. It has overthrown hockey from the coveted spot of ‘National Sport’ of our country. A victory in the 1983 World Cup revolutionized the sport’s stature in India. What Dhyan Chand achieved in an entire lifetime, Kapil Dev could achieve in a matter of one month. If it was Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar who elevated the Indian cricket team’s position at the national as well as international levels, it was Jagmohan Dalmiya who established India’s supremacy in the world cricket arena by pumping in enormous amount of wealth into the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI), the apex governing body of cricket in India. Today, India’s Cricket Board is the richest one in the world. India is the power-centre of the sport in the world. A sport introduced and dominated by the British for years has been taken over by the sub-continent countries especially India. India’s political and economic clouts even forced the International Cricket Council to reconsider and bend the WADA-Anti Doping rules to suit the Indian cricketers’ whims and fancies.
But has anyone pondered about the condition of women’s cricket in India? India’s women’s cricket team played their first test match in as early as 1976. Since then, it has won four Asia Cups; has been a World Cup finalist once and reached the semi-finals five times. Compare this with our men’s cricket team; except one World Cup victory (in 1983), our women’s cricket team has done far better than our men’s cricket team, considering the dismal amount of opportunities our women cricketers get! Ganguly and his men took India to the final of the 2003 World Cup and were thrashed royally by Australia. Besides, it has reached the semi-finals of the mega-tournament only twice. Yet, our women cricketers play in front of empty stands and face flak for their ‘sluggish,’ ‘lacklustre’ cricket. In fact, women’s cricket is very often referred to as ‘Tortoise Game’ in India and worldwide.
Historically, women and sports have been regarded diametrically opposite to each other, or in other words, incompatible. The notion of ‘sports as male bastion’ still exists in the society, especially in case of those sports that require more physical exertion on the field and more time for the end result to materialize. Take for instance, Wimbledon. Till 2007, women were offered lower prize money in comparison to their male counterparts. Why? Because women play less amount of tennis than men on a given day in a particular match! Women tennis players are considered incompetent and incapable of prevailing through five sets, which is why women’s matches are decided in three sets unlike the matches of their male counterparts. Take another instance. When Annika Sörenstam made history at the ‘Bank of America Colonial’ tournament in 2003 as the first woman to play in a men’s PGA Tour event since 1945, everyone questioned her participation in the event. Why? Because, according to the accepted notions, women can never match up to men. Also, physical contact has been used as an excuse for not allowing women to play with or against men. This reminds me of the Hindi movie, “Dil Bole Hadippa.” Rani Mukherjee, an aspiring cricketer is not allowed to play alongside ten other men in a cricket team because she is a woman. The society forces her to put on a male disguise so that she can fit into the accepted gender roles and realize her dreams. She idolizes Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar. Is it because there are no women cricketers for our potential women cricketers to idolize? There are various reasons as to why the achievements of our women’s cricket team never gain as much attention as the men’s cricket team’s achievements do. The dearth of role models or idols in women’s cricket is just illusory, exaggerated and socially fabricated.
In the movie, Rani Mukherjee alias Veera alias Veer is the best cricketer in the team. The whole team as well as their victory is dependent on her batting performance. But in reality, the story of women’s cricket is entirely different. Former captain of Indian women’s cricket team, Anjum Chopra comments, “Of course, when a girl starts playing she tends to idolize the men more because they are more visible on television. But, subsequently, she starts looking for or identifying her idols in women’s cricket. You always want to play like a Tendulkar or a Dhoni, when it comes to ground realities, the physical strengths cannot be compared. And we should also not try to compare them. We should try to play like them in terms of technique and timing, but not in terms of power cricket.” Hence, the physical barrier remains a huge factor in the success of women’s cricket in India. Also, visibility and media coverage elude women cricketers to a large extent.
In an another instance, a docudrama titled “Indian Women’s Cricket team Poor Cousins of Million Dollar Babies” highlights the disparity between men and women cricket players in India. When a men’s cricket match is played, tickets are sold between 200-3500 rupees and even higher. On the contrary, when a women’s cricket match is played, entry is free. Yet the stadium will be less than half-full or completely deserted. At times, school and college students are taken to the stadiums to partially fill them up. “The technique is just as good, though the game may be slower, but the girls have just not been able to attract crowds,” says Jyothi Joshi, former treasurer of the Indian Women’s Cricket Association. Why? Because, women can simply not provide the same amount of entertainment as men can. People come to stadiums to watch towering sixes and sizzling boundaries. Women are always one step behind men when it comes to playing aggressive cricket. At a time when cricket is getting faster and faster, especially with the proliferation of Twenty-twenty cricket, women’s cricket is increasingly becoming unpopular. Though Twenty-twenty format has been infused into women’s cricket as well for its well-being, critics believe that women’s cricket can never be ‘fast and furious.’
Currently, Indian women’s cricket team is ranked number three in the International Cricket Rankings below England and Australia. Unlike our ‘pampered,’ ‘glorified’ men’s cricket team which has more name than success to harp on about, the women’s cricket team has achieved this ranking fighting against all odds. The story of Jhulan Goswami, India’s captain, is nothing short of a fairytale. Just as Dhoni’s rise to captaincy, success and fame continues to be a story worth immense coverage, her story that starts in a small village in West Bengal, called Chakda, should also be highlighted in the media. She is one of the fastest bowlers in the world. But she hardly manages to hog even 10% of the limelight that the media has exclusively allocated for Dhoni. Similarly, when Mithali Raj, the world record holder for the highest score in test cricket, scored the test double century against England in 2002 and grabbed the top ranking in international cricket, the media unfortunately reduced it into an inconsequential development by allotting a tiny space at the bottom page of newspapers and dedicating less than one minute on television news channels for it. The disparity between coverage for men’s game and women’s game is also one of the primary reasons for the apathy shown by the public towards women’s cricket. Interestingly, she remarks, “But even the attention I did get was unexpected, so I was not really disappointed.” A clear indication of the indifference of the media towards women’s cricket in India! Shockingly, women’s cricket world cup tournaments were never televised live before the 2009 World Cup. Anjum Chopra, a regular commentator in Doordarshan and an expert analyst on men’s cricket in various news channels, points out, “Playing for India is a motivation. And then you have a hundred countries watching it live on TV. It’s an impetus to the sport, a great thing to happen to women’s cricket per se.”
Recently, BCCI awarded the TV rights to Nimbus for a whopping $612 million, which means Nimbus has to pay BCCI Rs. 31.5 crore per international match for the next four years. Dhoni earns more than US$10 million a year followed by Tendulkar who earns US$ 8 million a year. In stark contrast, women cricketers are sometimes compelled to take care of their own travels and be satisfied with barest of facilities. With the merger of the Women’s Cricket Association of India with the BCCI in 2006 as part of the ICC’s initiative to develop women’s cricket, the infrastructural and financial assistance for women’s cricket has increased substantially. Apart from technical support such as good coaches, decent practice grounds and physiotherapy services, BCCI has also ensured the influx of sufficient amount of funds into the organization of women’s cricket events and training of women cricketers. However, the delay in the merger has affected women’s cricket in India to a large extent. In countries like New Zealand and Australia, the merger happened much before and therefore, the sharing of funds took the women’s version of the game to a more technologically advanced level. This changed the quality of their cricket by leaps and bounds. Indian women’s cricket has just commenced the journey – long and arduous.
When the ICC decided to handle the ninth women’s World Cup held earlier this year, women’s cricket got a fresh boost. BCCI should follow suit and organize more women’s cricket tournaments. The fact that cricket organizations took so long to intervene in women’s cricket itself is shameful. Now that the first step has been taken, more initiatives must be implemented to popularize the game among the public, particularly the cricket maniacs. Corporate organizations must come forward to sponsor those events. Companies like Reebok, Pepsi, Sahara India, LG, Vodafone and others invest massive amount of money in men’s cricket. They can definitely afford to contribute at least 25% of that huge sum in women’s cricket. Instead of doing it as a gesture of goodwill or charity as is being done now, women’s cricket must be transformed into a profit-making venture. The private sector’s reluctance to support women’s cricket in India is partly due to the almost non-existent media attention it garners. There is cricket beyond men and if sufficient amount of attention is not paid towards the improvement of women’s cricket’s condition in the country, the social, physical and psychological barriers will only get more solidified, from which point a rearward movement is rather impossible. A systemic change is what we need at this juncture!
One more thing that we must keep in mind is that Mandira Bedi or Shonali Nagrani is not the face of women’s cricket in India. They do not add value to the game of cricket in anyway. A Diana Edulji, a Mithali Raj, a Neetu David, a Mamatha Maben, an Anjum Chopra, a Jhulan Goswami – they are the real heroes/heroines of India’s women’s cricket. The purpose of having a Mandira Bedi in the pre- and post-match ‘analysis’ shows was supposedly to attract female audiences. The very same ‘highly-acclaimed’ brand ambassadors could take some time out to promote women’s cricket if their efforts to draw the female population of the country towards cricket in general have indeed succeeded!
The Author Dhanasree Jayaram is a student of English Literature at Stella Maris College and is an aspiring journalist. Ironically, she enjoys non-fiction more than fiction. Though English Literature transcends fancy and imagination to delve into social and political issues as evident in essays, (auto)biographies, travel writing and so on, purists are still unconvinced about the role of non-fiction in the sphere of English Literature. Urvashi Butalia’s amazing account of partition – “The Other Side of Silence” was the first non-fiction work that changed her flawed perception of non-fiction. Besides reading, she loves politics and polemical writing pertaining to politics. Obsessed with Indian elections – Centre or State – she has an unrelenting fascination for psephology. She is a strong advocate of protection of environment and therefore, regards eco-feminism as a formidable force. She wishes to specialize in South Asian Affairs (including literature) and explore the conflict-ridden areas of South Asian countries. She devours sports (mainly soccer, cricket and tennis) and has an uncanny tendency to support the underdogs (even when India is one of the teams on the ground)! Music, especially Carnatic, Hindustani and Instrumental (violin) is very close to her soul! She likes reading “The Hindu” and “The New York Times” occasionally. She watches all movies except fantasies; She cannot digest fantasies including the ‘legendary’ Harry Potter!!
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