VK Sanju

At a press conference, a journalist hailed Mithali Raj as the “Sachin Tendulkar of women’s cricket”. She didn’t pause to reply and shot back: she would rather be known as Mithali Raj. Her quiet riposte - whether men’s cricketers were ever compared to women - hung in the air, unanswered.

Today, no one would dare call Harmanpreet Kaur the AB de Villiers of women’s cricket. If Sachin Tendulkar’s homecoming once drew neighbour Jemimah Rodrigues to the game, it is now Harmanpreet’s slog sweeps, Smriti Mandhana’s silken drives and Shafali Verma’s blazing hits that ignite the dreams of young girls.

It was not that long ago when training was at the police gymkhana grounds with boys’ teams as sparring partners. Budget hotels for the players, while foreign sides were put up in five-star suites. Such was the life of India’s senior women cricketers hardly 12 years ago.

Exactly 12 years ago, when India last hosted the Women’s World Cup, a Ranji match with Sachin could see the venue shifted, and that too with little protest. The stands held only schoolchildren from nearby in uniforms, summoned to fill the void. A quick sweep of the TV camera was enough to show the near empty galleries.

Back then, the Indian women’s team stayed in hotels barely fit to host them, a fact former captain Diana Eduljee once laid bare to the press. That such hardships existed feels almost unreal now—though perhaps it is no surprise that even Mithali Raj’s biopic, Shabaash Mithu, passed unnoticed.

During those days, victories came only against minnows; a hard-fought loss to giants was treated as triumph. Now, 12 years on, with the World Cup returning to India, the hosts stand among the favourites!

In 2013, she was a 23-year-old who rattled England, her name tucked into the margins of sports pages; a pale girl chasing Virender Sehwag’s audacity. In 2025, she returns as India’s captain. At 37, this will be Harmanpreet Kaur’s last ODI World Cup.

As the men once won for Sachin in 2011, as Argentina rallied for Messi in 2022, this team dreams of lifting the trophy for Hari Didi. After Mithali, Harmanpreet is among the game’s greats. She deserves this. And if what slipped from Mithali’s grasp finally comes to Harmanpreet, it will be no exaggeration, but only justice.

Before 1983, they mocked Kapil Dev’s men, saying they had come to play hide-and-seek. In 2013, Indian women could not even dare world cup dreams. But today’s team needs no words - the World Cup semi-final cannot be imagined without them.

As Sanju Samson’s exclusion once stirred debate in men’s cricket, so did Shafali Verma’s in the women’s game. The Indian side is now so deep in talent that even an X-factor like Shafali struggles for a place. Times have changed.

Where once the senior women faced under-16 boys at police gymkhanas, now ahead of the World Cup, they have toured England and hosted Australia in home series. Gymkhana grounds have yielded to state-of-the-art facilities, and Indian women now make waves even in overseas T20 leagues.

There was a time when the Indian women earned Rs 1 lakh for an entire tournament and Rs 1,500 a day which was hardly enough for a cup of coffee abroad. But today, BCCI pays men and women equally.

This World Cup offers more prize money than India’s men earned in the T20 World Cup. Wins that once found small spaces in the sports-page margins now make front-page news. The uniformed schoolchildren are gone; stands now roar with passionate fan groups wherever the team plays.

The trials and struggles of India’s men mirror those of the women. If change came for the men after the 1983 World Cup, it arrived for women in the 2017 World Cup when they reached the final. Though they fell short by mere inches under crushing pressure, fans who wept with them and have stayed forever loyal. Though they didn’t lift the trophy, the tournament proved the team was world-class.

Launched in 2023, the Women’s Premier League gave women their own IPL. This year, viewership soared 142 per cent, with 31 million tuning in. In 2024, WPL champions Royal Challengers Bangalore’s women received a guard of honour from the men’s team, including Virat Kohli. Perhaps, their triumph even inspired the men to win their first IPL title the next season.

Once confined to metro cities, women’s cricket now reaches smaller towns. The Indian team has played internationals in Navi Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Delhi, while WPL matches have packed the Chinnaswamy and DY Patil Stadiums.

This World Cup brings matches to Guwahati, Indore and Visakhapatnam. The women play at Indore, a Test venue, for the first time; Visakhapatnam hasn’t hosted a women's international match in 11 years. Like Navi Mumbai and Bengaluru, these cities hope to draw crowds. They are spurred by local stars: Uma Chetri from Guwahati, Assam’s first woman in the team; Sreecharani from Kadapa near Visakhapatnam; and Kranti Gaud from Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh.

Though absent from the current squad, three players from Wayanad, Kerala - Minnu Mani, Sajna Sajeevan and Asha Shobhana- have donned the Indian jersey. VJ  Joshitha, another from Kerala, blazed in the Under-19s and awaits her senior call-up. A storm is rising in Indian women’s cricket, gathering strength with every match. Should they claim this World Cup, the glittering heights of men’s cricket will no longer be beyond their reach.