Playing the other T20

At Taunton, England, women are playing competitive cricket. Their heroics are no less than men’s. But is anyone interested?

You can safely assume that some cricketing records will never be broken. There’s Don Bradman’s batting average of 99.94 and Sachin Tendulkar has 43 ODI hundreds and looks good for a few more. Sajjida Shah can ease into any such list but chances are you haven’t encountered this name ever before. The all-rounder turned out for the Pakistan national women’s cricket team in 2000 when she was just 12. Now, as experienced as Yuvraj Singh in international cricket, Shah and her teammates (which includes another teenager who went on a hunger strike to defy her father’s objection to her career choice) will ply their wares at Taunton as part of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup. The eves have always been more resourceful and innovative than their male counterparts. If the grit, perseverance and self esteem of international women cricketers could be harnessed, you could play a floodlit Test match at Eden gardens.
The first Women’s World Cup was played in 1973, two full summers before the men did, and they stole the march even when it came to playing the first international T20 match. But respect and recognition still eludes them, especially in India. The cash rich ICC merged with itself the global women’s cricket body in 2005, and issued a diktat to all member countries to follow suit. Quite predictably, the stubborn and medieval BCCI was the last to fall in line. Now that BCCI, the turbo-charged commercial engine of global cricket ,has finally taken over the Women’s Cricket Association of India, Mithali Rajs and Jhulan Goswamis get access to facilities at major Test venues such as Feroz Shah Kotla and Mohali, and even the national cricket academy. That’s a sea change from the days when camps before major international tournaments were organized at grounds that wouldn’t even offer proper turf wickets, not to mention dressing rooms. Women cricketers may not become commercially saleable superstars like Tendulkar or Dhoni anytime soon, but today it’s not an uncommon sight to find them practicing the big hits and the doosras at municipal stadiums at least in the big cities.
Since the ICC took over the women’s game in 2005, the number of countries playing women’s cricket has quadrupled. The ICC’s initiative to hold men’s and women’s world cups concurrently in the same host nation is a welcome step. After all, at even Wimbledon, considered one the last bastions of tradition, the disparity in the prize money for men and women has disappeared. In a departure from tradition, Wisden named Claire Taylor, the World Cup winning English player as one of its five cricketers of 2008. The eves are swinging it like Sehwag.

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TR Vivek