The sorry state of women’s cricket in the country took the back seat for a few weeks after Mithali Raj & Co. gave the cricket-obsessed fans a lot to cheer about with their stupendous performance in the recently-concluded World Cup. After making it to the main tournament by playing the qualifiers, the Women in Blue exceeded all the expectations and defied all the words to qualify for the final.
The Women in Blue defeated the likes of England, New Zealand and Australia to make it to the summit clash where they fell short by just nine runs against England. But the result of the final aside, they managed to attract the attention of millions of fans towards them.
The likes of Punam Raut, Veda Krishnamurthy, Sushma Verma became household names. With the social media flooded with messages for the women cricketers and fans across the country going gaga over Mithali Raj & her World Cup team, the BCCI and the state governments also did their bit by announcing cash rewards. Prizes and appreciations dominated the headlines for the past couple of weeks but all of them are slowly becoming a thing of the past now.
It looks like, it is high time that the BCCI takes some concrete steps for the betterment of women’s game in the country. And the board should start from giving the team as much importance as the men’s team gets. It is very unfortunate as well as shocking to find out that the team which made the whole country proud with its valiant efforts in the World Cup does not have any place on BCCI’s official website. A click on Team India section would open up the below page but one would not find even a trace of the women cricketers.
On the other hand, other countries have no such exception. While the Pakistan Cricket Board has a separate section for women’s cricket on the homepage and also displays the team section along with the men’s team, Cricket Australia has not separated the men’s and women’s sections and displays both the set of contracted players together.
New Zealand Cricket is not an exception either and has even named the team White Ferns perhaps to motivate them.
Other top cricketing nations like England and South Africa have also not discriminated between the men’s and women’s team.
Recently, Cricket Australia showed the way by hiking the women’s salaries while India’s women players still do not know when they would don the national jersey again.
Well, the BCCI still has a long way to go but one thing is for sure that the world’s richest cricket board should start the long journey by correcting these small mistakes. The World Cup has shown that the fans are ready to embrace the women’s team with open arms but it is the board which needs to take the first step in the right direction for the betterment of the game.