FROM ORPHANAGE TO CRICKET STAR
FORMER AUSTRALIAN CRICKETER – NOW COMMENTATOR – LISA STHALEKAR’S EMOTIONAL JOURNEY
Lisa Sthalekar had never really given her family history much thought. For as long as she could remember, she knew she was adopted and had no burning desire to find her biological parents.
But that was before the Channel Seven cricket commentator, and former Australian women’s cricket team captain, ventured back to India, and back to the orphanage she once called home. “It really took me by surprise how emotional I was,” Lisa, 39, recalls.
Born in the Indian city of Pune, on August 13, 1979, Lisa was placed with the Shreevatsa orphanage by her biological parents, who were unable to support the newborn. Bombayborn Haren and English-born Sue Sthalekar, who lived in Michigan in the US, already had a daughter, Caprini, who they’d adopted in Bangalore six years earlier.
The family arrived at Shreevatsa with the hope of adopting a child. There they met Laila, who they would rename Lisa. The jubilant – and now larger – family returned to the US, and then moved to Kenya, before finally settling in Sydney, Australia. When Lisa journeyed to India in 2012, she had no intention of visiting the orphanage.
“Going there wasn’t something I wanted to do or had planned,” she says. “I was just in the city of Pune and my manager at the time said, ‘Why don’t we try to find it?’ And we did.”
Of course, she has no memories of her time at the orphanage. Lisa was, after all, just a baby. But she does admit she was taken aback at just how “surreal” it was to be there.
“I spoke to my father on the phone that night [after the visit] and he asked, ‘Did you walk up the tiny stairs to where the newborns are?’ And I said ‘yes’,” Lisa remembers. “For me to walk in the footsteps of my adopted parents was kind of cool.”
While she was at the orphanage, Lisa couldn’t help but wonder about the babies and what would happen to them. What will their life story be, she wondered? Where in the world would they end up?
She saw a little girl whose life – just like hers all those years ago – was about to change forever. “The girl was leaving her biological parents and she was going off to Norway,” she says. “I went, ‘Wow, her life is going to be different to what it is here in India.’”
The orphanage, Lisa says, has had a lot of success placing children with parents wanting to adopt. And yet, the centre also understands some adopted children will naturally have questions about their biological parents.
Lisa was faced with a question that could well have opened another door on her life.
“They asked me whether I wanted to find my biological parents when I was at the orphanage,” Lisa says. “I said, ‘No, actually I don’t.’ They were very respectful about that.”
In fact, from the moment she arrived at the orphanage, Lisa says she couldn’t have been
“I WONDERED, WHAT IF MY PARENTS HADN’T ADOPTED ME?”
treated better. It was as if the orphanage was welcoming home a long-lost daughter.
“They had a welcome ceremony for me where I sat down and they put on lights and did a kind of traditional Indian welcoming,” Lisa says. “I have to say, it was very emotional for me.”
As it turned out, the timing of Lisa’s visit was quite fortuitous. A week after she visited, the orphanage moved to another location.
There’s no doubt the trip to Shreevatsa left a lasting impression on the sports champion. And it forced her to ask herself a lot of questions about her own life.
“I wondered, what if my parents hadn’t adopted me?” she says. “Would I have been adopted at all?”
Ultimately, these are questions that are impossible to answer. But Lisa’s willingness to tell her personal story of adoption led her to Adopt Change, a project founded in 2008 by actress Deborra-lee Furness, with the aim to ensure every child has a home and to make adoption easier.
After Lisa spoke about her adoption story at a function, Adopt Change board member and former NSW Liberal Party leader Kerry Chikarovski approached her.
“She told me my story was a really positive one,” Lisa says. “Not all of them are, but mine is. I’m interested in campaigning for a change in legislation to ensure we don’t have a lot of kids without homes.”
On Saturday, Lisa will be right at home in the Seven commentary box as the Australian women’s cricket team takes on New Zealand in the first of three T20 matches.
Lisa’s father has no doubt shaped her love of cricket. She recalls being taken to the SCG by her father as a youngster to watch a cricket match and the day being “a great experience”.
“I think I was daddy’s little girl,” she smiles. “I’m sure I used to do everything he did.”