With Blue and Red Ribbons adorning their hair, the players of the first women’s cricket match (ever recorded) stepped into the fields of Surrey in 1745. The history of women’s cricket is a tale of passionate women cricketers coming together with immense love for the sport. The Village of Colwall in the summer of 1926 saw the establishment of the Women’s Cricket Association in England.
In India, cricket is a topic of conversation and heated discussions in essentially every household, to the extent that we constitute 90% of the one billion cricket fans across the globe. Yet, this dialogue is more often than not focused on the men’s cricket team and its current and former players. My own interest in women’s cricket only piqued thanks to my sister-in-law, who has played the sport at National level.
The first women’s cricket club sprouted in Mumbai in 1971, when, apparently Nutan Gavaskar, Sunil Gavaskar’s sister, was dragged by her friends to Mumbai’s Albee's Cricket Club. The next few years saw more clubs come up in different parts of India.
Under the Societies Act of Lucknow, Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI) was set up. Pramilakaki Chavan, a politician and member of parliament, was a founding member of Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI). She compared the cricketers' bats to Jhansi ki Rani’s (The Queen of Jhansi’s) sword, and said that if she could have wielded it, then so can they wield the bats. This, remarkably, became the reason for the inter-zonal tournament later being called ‘Rani-Jhansi Trophy’ (first held in Kanpur in 1974). Another founding member, Mahendra Kumar Sharma, gathered crowds to watch the women play a match in Lucknow by travelling on an autorickshaw, urging people to come by announcing it on a microphone. The WCAI received the International Women's Cricket Council (IWCC) membership in 1973 and Government recognition in 1978.
The Indian women’s cricket team went on to play their first official Test against the West Indies in 1976. Shanta Rangaswamy was the first captain of the Indian Cricket team, leading them fiercely, she was awarded the Arjuna Award for cricket.
In 1986 Sandhya Agarwal made a world record of 190 beating Betty Snowball's score of 189 that had held the record in Women's Test cricket since 1935.
Sexist cartoons plagued the newspapers in the 1970s and 80s in relation to the rise of Indian Women in cricket, causing a reinforcement of the problematic narratives that deter women from participating in sports in the first place. These trends continue today.
Sports history impacts the way one views the sport in contemporary times. Evidence of the same lies in the common discourse around ‘sporting legends’ and in the importance that numbers, in terms of wins, runs, etc. hold for all sports. This also impacts the social capital surrounding a sport and the kind of fan following that it garners, since all discussions essentially go back and forth from the current standing of teams in sports and their previous position or achievements. The main reason cited for less viewership or little attention given to women’s sports is the lack of it in the mainstream sporting discourse or the little awareness regarding the sporting events. The social capital is also often argued as a point in justifying the wage gap between male and female players of the same sport. Understanding and being aware of the histories becomes important in tackling the issues pertaining to social capital and in turn, wages. The journey of women’s cricket in India has largely existed as oral history, which is another cause of people’s ignorance of the same.
Yet, with the growing quality of performances by the women’s teams across the world and the questioning of the systems in place, there is hope for a change and a spike in interest in terms of the histories of these sports as well as the current viewerships.