DUBAI: What is storytelling? It can be written words, songs, or for the modern social media savvy generation, it can even be an Instagram reel. With the exponential growth of the women's game in the last few years, social media has seen more bad days than good ones in terms of positive conversations, but there are a few who are making use of it to tell stories of athletes.
Pratiksha from Karnataka is one of them, who runs an Instagram account that celebrates women's cricket. "I have always been interested in cricket. I used to watch men's cricket because I honestly didn't know that women's cricket existed," Pratiksha, a college student, told this daily.
"I used to see some stuff about women's cricket from here and there, but I thought very few were watching the game and it is not getting recognised as such. With the Women's Premier League, I tried to search cricket pages dedicated to the women's game, and I could only find a few. I wanted to start it last year, but I couldn't because of my exams. On January 19 this year, I officially started it just for the love of it," she added.
Like many fans who started watching the game, Pratiksha first opted to make reels on her favourite player, Australia's Ellyse Perry, without expecting any views from it. "When I saw Ellyse Perry in the WPL, I wanted to know more about her. Then I found out about her double hundred in the Test against England. I love her bowling action. Then I thought I would start reels with her. Then I showed it to my friends, they liked it so I started posting it. When I posted it for the first time, it got some 2000-3000 views, but after WPL the reach went past one million," she says, adding that it is one of the most watched reels on her account as of today.
However, after making reels on some of the well-known names, something shifted. Her followers kept asking Pratiksha to make reels on some other players and she obliged. "Initially I thought I would end up making reels on the most famous players like Perry, and Smriti Mandhana, but then my followers kept asking me about reels on different people in the comments.
After looking at recommendations like that of Lauren Bell, Jemimah Rodrigues, and Chamari Athapaththu; I started learning more about these players. I went back and watched their old highlights and it inspired me to learn more about the history of the women's game."
While making reels for her followers she kept learning more and more about those players, which, she believes, led to more awareness. "When I started doing reels, I figured out that there is not a lot of awareness about some of the best cricketers in the world outside of a few names. Take Natalie Sciver-Brunt for example. Not many people outside of core women's cricket fans knew about her achievements. WPL made her famous, I believe. I wanted to introduce many such great cricketers to the Indian audience so that they can learn about their achievements. I thought, if I make something about these players there will be an introduction at least. Even if five people get that knowledge, it's big for me."
While Pratiksha is very mindful about the songs she chooses for the players, there is a reason behind it. "Finding the perfect song can be hard because my edits are not that fancy. I am not objectifying their beauty. I just see their talent and I want to highlight that. It can be difficult to choose songs. For me, the meaning of the songs I am using in the reel is equally important. It takes time, but I continue to follow that process.
My followers, I think, are different. In a sense, they want to know more about players. So many of them have told me that they started following the game after watching my reels. I feel great when I get that kind of message. Recently, I did an Instagram question session and the questions were so mature that pushed me to do my work even better. Sometimes, I feel I cannot be consistent but they keep me going," she signed off.