On field affairs!

Had Stuart Binny not been controversially selected for the World Cup squad, chances are that more people would have recognised Mayanti Langer by name than they did her husband. With the 2015 World Cup, the role of the sportsman’s “wife and/or girlfriend” has undergone a welcome change. The likes of Amrita Mukherjee, Anushka Sharma and Sakshi Dhoni prove that, the WAGs can now have a life of her own.

While Mayanti was a face that was long familiar to people who watched prematch shows, Shikhar Dhawan’s wife Amrita Mukherjee is an amateur boxer. While Anushka Sharma had made her ground quite spectacularly in Indian cinema long before her relationship with Virat Kohli became public. Deepika Pallikal was the face of women’s squash in India much before her engagement with Dinesh Kartik. Sarah Waris, one of the few women writers of cricket says, “Even today, it is cricket and Bollywood which grabs the maximum eyeballs in Indian media. It wasn’t only Kohli who had his girlfriend travelling with him to England, yet he was unjustly attacked because she was a known face. So yes, the media may not report about the lives of an Umesh Yadav or Rahane, but won’t hesitate to extensively cover Kohli’s every move with Anushka.” It may have taken us a few years to get to a point where an Anushka Sharma can slam a reporter for asking her if her presence at the World Cup is going to distract a certain Indian batsman sic, but we are glad to have reached that stage.