Changing scenario
“We have seen an increase in the ratio of girls taking up sport. Not only at the school level, but a lot of them are taking it up as a profession,” says Mithali Raj.
Mithali Raj, former captain of India women’s ODI and Test teams, said that schools need to promote team sports if they want to encourage more girls to take up cricket as a hobby. “Over some time, the schools probably stopped encouraging girls. Maybe, they felt having a team sport is very difficult when it comes to girls. That is why I have been hearing the panellists talking about individual sports,” Mithali, who joined virtually, said during a panel discussion titled ‘Encouraging Girls To Play in Schools & Communities’ at Sportstar’s South Sports Conclave in Chennai. “They feel it is better to invest in individual sport... and that is why a lot of girls move to individual sports. But to have a school team, you will need a specific number of players. So, it comes down to schools to encourage to form the team, and encourage the girls so that if any girl represents India in the U19 World Cup, the school will have the honour of having an international player.
“That said, in the last few years, we have seen an increase in the ratio of girls taking up the sport. Not only at the school level, but a lot of them come up [taking it up as a profession]. It’s no more a hobby. And with the central contracts and the Women’s IPL scheduled next year, a lot of things are happening at a higher level in women’s cricket.”
Anju Bobby George, the only Indian to have won a medal in the World Championships with a long jump bronze in the 2003 edition, spoke about the hurdles she had to overcome as a young female athlete. “When my mother decided to send me to athletics, some of my relatives pointed out things like I’ll get dark, the shortness of my clothes, and how all this might affect my family life and so on. But slowly, when my photo started coming on paper, they also started accepting,” she said. Recollecting an interesting anecdote, Anju added: “Back in my time, the European athletes used to wear two pieces, but I was not ready to wear that. That was a mind block for me. I was a Nike athlete, and it used to send me two pieces, and I decided to wear that in the Grand Prix (which was outside India), and there I won a medal. The next day, a huge photo of mine was printed on the front page of newspapers. And my first thought was ‘Oh my god! What do I do now?”
Alisha Abdullah, Indian motorsports racing driver, and Dr. Anjali Chopra, MBA Sports Management, KJ Somaiya Institute of Management, were also part of the panel discussion moderated by former India cricketer Sudha Shah.