CHENNAI: IN March 2022, the Equal Hue initiative and GoSports Foundation, with the support of FDC Limited and Brigade Foundation, announced several initiatives aimed at creating pathways for aspiring female cricketers across the country. While it has taken almost a year to materialise, things have been happening in fast-forward mode in the last few months.
The first step of the initiatives being 15 up and coming cricketers, including the U19 T20 World Cup winners like Shwetha Sehrawat, Titas Sadhu, Falak Naz and Sonia Mendhiya, recently selected for the Equal Hue Cricket Excellence Programme — an athlete support programme which will assist the players with training and development, mentorship, legal support for commercial engagements, advice on media management and more.
The programme is designed based on the Equal Hue Report put together by former India cricketer Snehal Pradhan, Karunya Keshav and the late Sidhanta Patnaik — the duo who authored Fire Burns Blue, a book on history of women’s cricket in India. While initially it was said that the scholarship would be awarded to 32 aspiring cricketers between the age of 16-23, the final number of players selected has come down to 15. The robust selection process based on not just the performance of the players in the last couple of seasons, but also understanding them as people has led to this. Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO of GoSports, says that they are considering opening more slots in the programme moving forward.
The selection process also helped them understand that the needs will be different for players coming from widespread socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. For example, Kerala cricketer Darsana Mohanan grew up in a family where both her parents were farmers. Through the last decade the 23-year-old has been associated with the sport, it's been a struggle for her to prioritise cricket. She has to travel one and half hours from her house in Mananthavady to the Wayanad Cricket Stadium in Meenangadi. Not to mention the expenses that come with cricketing equipment, food and training.
"My father passed away a couple of years ago. My brother is an auto driver and mother is an anganwadi worker. Our financial position is not very strong and it would be a hassle to maintain our household and my cricket expenses in my match fee," Darsana told this daily.
Until recently, she had tried applying for Kerala state government and Railways jobs in hopes of helping her family. Now that her daily travel and other expenses would be covered, Darsana believes that she can focus on taking her cricket career to the next level while her match fee could go to the household expenses. It is not just the 23-year-old, there are many more among the 15 and beyond who are in need of such a support system. Perhaps, the bigger question here is how the initiative could move forward at a time when the popularity of the women's game is growing rapidly, especially with the advent of the Women's Premier League. Deepthi believes that the support network the players will get with the coaches, mentors, sports science experts and former players would supplement everything they get from the BCCI. "We believe this will expose these young players to high-performance environments early in their careers and give them a better understanding of the areas they need to focus on and the habits they need to cultivate to become top athletes," she said.
Players awarded the scholarship: Shweta Sehrawat (Delhi), Titas Sadhu (Bengal), Pragati Singh (Punjab), Pooja Raj (Uttarakhand), Ishwari Savkar (Maharashtra), Tanmayee Behera (Odisha), Kanishka Thakur (MP), Mithila Vinod (Karnataka), Darsana Mohanan (Kerala), Nandini Kashyap (Uttarakhand), Kashvee Gautam (Chandigarh), Sonia Mendhiya (Haryana), Sanika Chalke (Mumbai), Falak Naz (Uttar Pradesh), Maya Sonawane (Maharashtra).