Coming from a land of die-hard cricket lovers, I feel bad when I see countless disparities ailing the game of cricket. Do you know Mithali Raj has scored more runs than Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in T20 international cricket for India?
Well, I am sure a lot of us don’t even know her. Because in India, cricket is a man’s game. Recently, the Indian women’s rugby team created a world record by registering their first-ever international U-15s victory by defeating Singapore in the Asia Rugby Women’s Championship (Division1). Even the Indian women’s hockey team made it to the final of the FIH. Well, stories like these are countless.
Mithali Raj is the highest T20 international run-scorer for India. The country hosted the first Women’s Cricket World Cup in 1978 with just four participating teams. We have this habit of overlooking things. On one hand, we worship the likes of Sachin, Gavaskar, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Virat Kohli, Ganguly, and Kapil Dev. While on the other hand, we don’t provide women’s cricket with the attention it deserves.
When it comes to acknowledgment, men get more attention than women. Today, male cricketers endorse some of the top brands. Women cricketers, on the other hand, find it hard to gain media attention.
Sometimes, I wonder if we actually ask someone, “Who is your favorite female cricketer?” We don’t, do we?
Though the situation is gradually improving, the question is: how long did it take us to recognize women’s cricket as a real sport? Not many are aware of the fact that the Indian women’s cricket team did not play competitive cricket for seven months after the World Cup.
Producing films dealing with sportspersons’ lives doesn’t do much good if we’re hypocritical in real life. The Indian women’s cricket team needs more commercial support. They need to play more matches. Most importantly, they need recognition.
The fact is, in reality, women cricketers are struggling to keep their body and soul together because it’s a man’s world. Women cricketers do not enjoy a wide fan base. How many of us know who captains the Indian women’s cricket team? There’s no glamour in women’s cricket. We still don’t have a women’s IPL!
The problem is: men have, for a considerable amount of time, overpowered women. They’ve ruled cricket for quite some time now. Even though women’s cricket has finally started getting the attention it so badly deserves, but it still has a long distance to cover.