Harmanpreet learned to play cricket with a hockey stick, alongside boys. Shafali Verma cut her hair short so she could train unnoticed in Rohtak. Now they are World Champion !

By Rahul Das ( Part 3)

In Mumbai, Vishal Yadav’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing. As the head of operations at Female Cricket Academy, he’s received more than 200 calls in the days following the final from parents eager to enrol their daughters in coaching. “We even had a couple of husbands calling on behalf of their wives who wanted to learn cricket,” he says. He had to explain to them that the academy focuses on age-group coaching. “We started in 2017 after the interest from that World Cup, but this is unprecedented.”Sunil Soni, a coach who has trained Mumbai Indians’ Humaira Kazi, tells a similar story. He’s been fielding calls from all age groups and is already planning an exclusive women’s coaching batch.

In Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, the win set off street celebrations. Videos emerged of impromptu screenings in the middle of the road, of people bursting into cheers and setting off fireworks as India won the title.For decades, women’s cricket in India had existed in the shadows, but something fundamental shifted in the nation’s sporting consciousness as Harmanpreet Kaur and her team paraded the World Cup through a sea of cheering fans. From Bollywood stars, business leaders, former players and administrators to the person on the street, the sentiment was unmistakable: cricket no longer felt like a man’s game; the women had come into their own.

The path to that night in Navi Mumbai was never easy. The players have grown up battling prejudice, were told to focus on their studies, mocked for their ambition, and reminded of the many obstacles in their paths. India is a country where countless girls drop out of sport at the onset of menstruation because of the social stigma, and where men, according to former India cricketer Shubhangi Kulkarni, once upon a time turned up to watch women play just to see if they wore skirts or pants.Harmanpreet learned to play cricket with a hockey stick, alongside boys. Shafali Verma cut her hair short so she could train unnoticed in Rohtak. That they had to do these things was celebrated, rather than viewed for what those experiences were – a reflection of a widespread lack of opportunity for women. ( Contd….)