Recently, BCCI secretary Shri Jay Shah announced a revised pay for Indian Women Cricket Team which is equivalent to the male counterparts and it is commendable. It was the shot in the arm which the women’s team required. I think the women’s team need to repeat a ‘83’ in order to get in the limelight. The 1983 World Cup worked as a catalyst for the men’s team for sure and look where Indian (men’s team) is now? Recently, our women’s team bludgeoned Sri Lanka in the Asia Cup final, but still they haven’t got the felicitation they deserved as it wasn’t enough to catch the eyeballs, I guess. Thanks to social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. to tell us about their achievement because otherwise, it would just have been a headline in the newspaper and no one would have noticed it. The viewership and followers of Women’s Cricket has increased over the past few years without any doubt but that increase isn’t exponential.
If you go two decades back, then women’s cricket hardly existed as hardly anyone was aware about the Indian’s women team (apart from cricketing experts). Cricket was synonymous with men’s cricket team and why not so? Our men’s team started winning overseas under the legacy of Sourav Ganguly, then the baton was passed on to M.S. Dhoni, then Virat Kohli and now Rohit Sharma. Our Women’s team took a stride in 2017 World Cup under the August leadership of Mitali Raj, where they nearly defeated England in the pulsating finals and have been up roaring since then. People started to feel their existence after that. Although, players like Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur etc. have come into the limelight since then, the others have started to make their presence feel. They made it to the 2020 T20 world cup finals but were thrashed. The 2022 Commonwealth games was another golden opportunity where the chance to win Gold Medal went begging. They were under total control but served the game in a silver platter to Australia at the end. Opportunities have been knocking their doors but unfortunately, they aren’t able to grab them.
It is an incontrovertible fact that people salute the rising sun only. Indian men’s team took a giant step after 1983 world cup. Broadcasters, advertisers started to pay attention only after that miraculous win. Women’s recent performance in the Asia Cup hasn’t come in the limelight and one of the reasons behind it is – patriarchy. Don’t agree with me? This is the truth as many people still have a stereotypical thinking that women’s cricket is boring, not profitable etc. That’s why I say that whatever feat they have achieved in the recent past, isn’t enough for stereotype people. We need to understand that we aren’t living in a patriarchal society anymore where the women are confined to do household chores only. Hope that this barrier gets removed if they win next year women’s T20 world cup.