Mithali Raj is among the couple of girls who have come through the struggling times of women’s cricket and also the happier days now that it is part of the Indian cricket board. Mithali is eminently qualified to talk about the changing face of women’s cricket, having played five World Cups and been around for close to two decades.
The Indian captain cited the reception the team received for playing the World Cup final as a case in point, comparing it with the nondescript return home after playing the 2005 final.
On return home she has many more things to say, and most of them made sense as they are related to promotion of women’s cricket in the country. She said Test cricket is the in thing and pleaded for more Test series, pointing out that in her long career she has just played 10 Tests and India played only five in the last five years.
In her initial remarks after the final, Mithali saw more takers for the shorter versions of the game and thought the time was ripe for a women’s IPL to cash in on the World Cup showing by the girls, more so looking at the eyeballs it got in India.
Mithali may not have been able to control her emotions and cried once back in her hotel room after the Lord’s final, but she has shown many of our captains of our men’s teams how to conduct publicly. She spoke remarkably well at the post-match media conference. Only a day after the game she explained how her spikes got stuck to run her out without making an excuse.
She is never offensive while making her point. She does it politely, like she did answering about her captaincy mistakes. She said she has to be in sync with her coach, can’t be listening to too many people and get her mind cluttered. Of course, her teammates provide inputs.
It is so easy to pick on every dismissal in those frenetic slog overs when India lost seven wickets in a heap for nothing. A critical appreciation would make the critics agree with Mithali’s honest assessment that the inexperienced girls were tense and could not get over their nerves.
Mithali did not forget the hardship days, recalling how Railways alone helped the girls with jobs. She knows what it means to have financial security and how many girls would have quit cricket but for the Railways.
Mithali is a role model today with the highest aggregate and so are Jhulan Goswami, the highest wicket-taker in the One-Day internationals (ODI), Harmanpreet Kaur and all-rounder Deepti Sharma. When Shanta Rangaswamys, Diana Eduljis and Purnima Raos started playing in flannels people did not take women’s cricket seriously, they saw it more as some kind of entertainment, not serious competitive business. From there the game has spread globally and today India are among the top teams.
Now it is for the cricket board to encourage and promote women’s cricket in a big way. The board thinks it is not yet time for women’s IPL, but looking at the performance of Harmanpreet and Smriti Mandhana in Big Bash down under, it should seriously contemplate starting it soon.
Mithali’s daring girls have done to women’s cricket what Kapil’s Devils have done to men’s cricket and, importantly, people want to watch them.
Ideally, the IPL can have a double header, woman playing the first match of the evening before men playing the night game. That would cut down on the budgetary and infrastructural expenses.