Women’s cricket in India has changed massively in recent times. The progress has been both in terms of quality and women’s cricket as a brand. The social media buzz and conversations happening around our women cricketers, especially during the recently concluded Women’s Cricket World Cup held in New Zealand, clearly reflects the changing times. While it is still only a fraction of the kind of impact men’s cricket creates in India, however, there has been positive movement in recent times.

For every sport to grow, we need role models. Somebody who can be the aspiration of the young generation and inspire them to follow a sport. The 1983 World Cup win under the leadership of Kapil Dev changed things for men’s cricket and a certain Sachin Tendulkar took Indian cricket to the next level in the 90s. Athletes like Saina Nehwal, MC Mary Kom, and Sania Mirza took their respective sports to a level like never before in India.

If we talk of women’s cricket in India, not so long ago it was struggling and had no real fan following. The women’s cricket matches had limited viewership and sponsorships. Not just in India but even globally, things were not significantly different. However, things have changed recently for Indian women’s cricket. Players like Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, and others have brought in a new revolution. Their superlative performances in International, as well as league cricket, have inspired many young Indian girls to take up the sport. Not just that, in recent years, brands have poured in, bringing in more money and stability to the game.

But, is the road to the Indian National Women’s Team smooth? Definitely ‘NOT’. With more interest comes more participation resulting in more competition. The first step for every young girl is to have a passion for the game. Without passion and love for the sport, it is next to impossible to keep playing at the highest level. The next step is to perform well in school cricket and district-level cricket and rise up the ranks. Good performances there can promote one to the state team and thus enter the domestic cricket scene.

The road beyond that gets even more complex as one enters the domestic structure. There are many domestic or first-class tournaments played in the country. However, the numbers are quite small when compared to their male counterparts. Men play the Ranji trophy, a four-day tournament, the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy, a T20 tournament, and the Vijay Hazare Trophy, a one-day tournament in their domestic season. The women only have the T20 and one-day matches, resulting in a lack of match practice.

The Women’s Senior One Day Trophy started in the year 2006-07. Railways have won the last edition. The Women’s Senior T20 Trophy is played by full members of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). There is a Senior Women’s One Day Challenger Trophy which is basically the women’s version of the NKP Salve Challenger Trophy, which started during the 2008-09 season. BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and IPL Governing Council Chairman Brijesh Patel have recently discussed plans to launch a Women’s IPL next year. Women’s IPL can be the pathbreaker for women’s cricket as it has the potential to increase the popularity of the sport and take it to the masses in India. T20 cricket is exciting and has always been a crowd puller.

Good performances in all these stages can take one closer to the Indian Women’s National Team. Earlier the biggest achievement for a women cricketer was to secure a government job through the game. But, things have changed now. Many women cricketers receive annual contracts and have deals with several brands bringing in a lot of positivity and the road only seems to get better from here.

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The recently concluded Women’s Cricket World Cup held in New Zealand was clear evidence of how much women’s cricket has progressed in recent times. The progress has been both in terms of quality and women’s cricket as a brand. The viewership has been increasing gradually bringing in more money and thus increasing the quality of sport and its display. Gone are the days of playing just for the love of the game as amateurs (the love of the game remains but they aren’t amateurs anymore). The women in cricket are now professionals and rightfully so.

But this hasn’t always been the case. Not so long ago, women’s cricket was struggling to bring in viewership and sponsorships. There have been cases of teams backing out of World Cups because of financial problems (Netherlands and West Indies in the 1978 World Cup). Let us have a look at how Women’s Cricket has transitioned and its gradual progress over the years.

The Beginning

Although the first recorded women’s cricket match was back in the 18^th century, the Women’s Cricket Association came into being in 1924 in England. 10 years later New Zealand and Australia created their own associations and this global reach led to the first International matches being played when England toured Australia in 1934/35. England won 2 out of 3 matches.

International cricket continued to grow which led to the foundation of the International Women’s Cricket Council in 1958. Eventually, there were five members but the numbers went on increasing. India joined in 1973 when the first women’s cricket association in India was set up.

World Cup

The Women’s division started their World Cup ahead of the men’s like the first Women’s World Cup was held in 1973 (the first Men’s World Cup was held in 1975). But because of its irregularities, by the time the 4^th Women’s World Cup was held in 1988, the Men’s World Cup had already moved ahead. Nonetheless, the Women’s World Cup has been a success, more so recently, and there have been 12 World Cups so far which have seen 3 different winners. The most recent being in 2022 in which Australia emerged as the winner.

Different nations started merging their men’s and women’s cricket associations. Eventually, in 2005, the International Women’s Cricket Council handed over the control of the women’s international cricket to the International Cricket Council (ICC).

The first Women’s T20 World Cup was held in 2009 simultaneously with the Men’s T20 World Cup. The Semi-finals and Finals saw the women’s game being held before the men’s match. This was seen as a way of securing more audience and media coverage. This wasn’t the case for much longer, the over-reliance on the Men’s matches to secure audience and media coverage soon ended as the Women’s T20 World Cup in 2018 held in West Indies was held independent of the men’s World Cup. That has been the case since.

Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022

The most recent of the Women’s World Cup was the Women’s 50-over World Cup which concluded on April 3^rd, 2022. This was the 12^th edition of the World Cup and was held in New Zealand.  Australia defeated England in the final to lift the World Cup for a record seventh time.

The tournament was supposed to be held in February-March of 2021 but was postponed by one year because of the pandemic. Eight teams participated in the tournament which is the same as the tournament’s previous edition. The matches were played in a League format where each team played all the other teams once and the top-4 teams at the end qualified for the semi-finals. Australia, England, South Africa, and West Indies made it to the semis.

India too was part of the World Cup and this was their 10^th appearance in the Women’s ODI World Cup. However, they have never won the trophy before and this time too they were knocked out on the group stage. India finished 5^th in the group stages failing to qualify for the semis by one point.

What’s next?

Today there are an estimated one billion cricket fans worldwide, of which 39 percent are female. The prize money for women’s cricket is also equal to that of men’s cricket in view of the fact it’s getting huge viewers for each match. The prize money for the 2020 T20 world cup for both males and females was the same at $1 million. ICC declared that the 50 over format World cup prize pool will also be the same for both men and women.

The evolution of women’s cricket as a sport and as an industry over the last few years has been dramatic. As we watch the best of these players take to the pitch, we should remember that their very presence is the result of a long, often forgotten, struggle on the part of generations of women to insist that they have a right to play at the highest levels of the game.

The Sports School Cricket Academy under the Mentorship of Robin Uthappa, provides aspiring cricketers with world-class training and best in class infrastructure to help them reach the next level. Our cricket program focuses on specialized coaching for batting, bowling, and wicket-keeping. The amount of training is assigned as per the skills and fitness level of the student, and adequate measures are taken care of to ensure the sport is fun for the beginners.

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In India, cricket is over faith and festival. Unfortunately, everyone praises the achievement achieved by the men cricketer. But our women cricketers also are talented and are always ready to move every stone for our country’s pride. Let us take a look at the ten greatest Indian women cricketers and how they paved the way for the country’s success during their time.

10) Neetu David

Neetu David is currently chairperson of the BCCI women’s selection committee and a former Indian Women Cricketer who play for the national women’s cricket team. She is a skillful left-arm spinner. Diana Edulji was her inspiration. She had started playing cricket after watching her.

Neetu holds the record for the best bowling figures in women’s Tests. In November 1995, she returned figures of 8/53 against England in Jamshedpur. Neetu was the highest wicket-taker in the 2005 Women’s World Cup tournament. Her 20 wickets were the greatest number of wickets taken by a player in the tournament. She was also the first bowler for India to take 100 wickets in Women’s ODIs.

9) Anjum Chopra

At an early age, Anjum Chopra stepped onto the cricket ground to play cricket. She leads the Women’s Cricket team. When she was at the wicket, it was difficult to keep memories of David Gower out of her mind. She is a phenomenal cricketer and achieved several milestones in her cricket career. She retired from all formats in 2012.

8) Jemimah Rodrigues

Jemimah Rodrigues is an Indian cricketer. She is a very young, talented, hard-working cricketer. In June 2018, she was awarded the Jagmohan Dalmiya Award presented by cricketer MS Dhoni for Best Domestic Junior Women’s Cricketer by the BCCI at Jharkhand.

One interesting fact from her life is that apart from cricket she is also a good hockey player and represented Maharashtra in both sports. His father is a real hero to her. Now, she is living her father’s dream. The young charismatic batter became only the second Indian woman to score a double-century in ODI cricket when she scored an unbeaten 202 for Mumbai against Saurashtra in 2017 and was also awarded the Best Woman Cricketer award (Jr Domestic) at the BCCI awards for 2017-18 seasons.

7) Deepti Sharma

Deepti Bhagwan Sharma is the pride of Uttar Pradesh and an international cricketer who plays for the Indian women’s national cricket team. She is an all-rounder who bats left-handed and bowls right-arm off break. She has scored 188 runs which is the third-highest run in WODIs. She started her career as an international cricketer in 2014.

6) Shefali Verma

Shafali Verma is an attacking opening batsman like Virender Sehwag and continues his legacy in cricket. She has an outstanding strike rate while batting. She became the youngest cricketer to play in a Women’s Twenty20 International match for India at the age of only 15. Due to the lack of a girls’ cricket academy in her native place, she had to disguise herself as a boy to go to the boys’ academy for training. Sachin Tendulkar is the source of inspiration for her success.

5) Shikha Pandey

Shikha Subas Pandey is an Indian cricketer and also an officer in the Indian Air Force (IAF). She is a multidimensional star. For her, education was the priority and she had never let her focus on games affect her academic performance. She is truly inspirational for all who are encountering problems with her education and dream. She has proved that you can achieve want you to want without any kind of loss or distractions.

4) Smriti Mandhana

Smriti Shriniwas Mandhana is a most stylish, who can play shot any part of the ground, Indian cricketer who plays for the Indian women’s national team. She is an attacking opening batsman and can destroy any bowling lineup. She has played so many fabulous and winning knock for the nation. The BCCI named her the Best Women’s International Cricketer in 2018.

3) Harmanpreet Kaur

Harmanpreet Kaur is an Indian cricketer. In the absence of Mithali Raj, she serves as the captain of the Indian team. She is an incredible all-rounder on the side. She was awarded the Arjuna Award for her outstanding performance in Cricket in the year 2017 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. She has smashed an exceptional century in Women’s T20I 2018 making her the first Indian woman who had done this.  She was inspired by Virender Sehwag.

2) Jhulan Goswami

Jhulan Nishit Goswami is a brilliant Indian international cricketer. She is regarded as one of the greatest and fastest women fast bowlers of all time.

She won the M.A. Chidambaram Trophy for Best Women’s Cricketer in 2011. Currently, she is the highest wicket-taker in Women’s ODIs. Thanks to the 1992 Cricket world cup that inspired her to play cricket and our nation got a true gem.

1) Mithali Raj

Mithali Dorai Raj is the Sachin Tendulkar of Women’s Cricket. Her captaincy skills are like MS Dhoni. During her childhood, she wanted to be a Bharatanatyam dancer.

As within the Hindi proverb, it is rightly said that “जो हुआ अच्छे के लिए हुआ” Bharatnatayam’s loss is cricket’s gain. She holds numerous traffic records in international cricket. She has scored the foremost runs in WODIs. She became the captain of the Indian WODIs side in 2005. Because of her outstanding fitness, and powerful determination, she has completed more than two decades of playing cricket for the nation. She has also received several prestigious awards, including Arjuna Award in 2003, the Padma Shri in 2015, and many more.

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