Men only? Not any more as women ‘flock’ to IPL
Bollywood glamour
NEW DELHI, May 25, (AFP): As women flock to the stands and take prominent positions in commentary boxes and boardrooms, cricket’s richest Twenty20 league is no longer solely a man’s world.
The days of male-dominated crowds spending as much time ogling cheerleaders on the boundary as taking in action in the middle have been consigned to the past as the 2016 edition of the Indian Premier League reaches a climax with Sunday’s final.
Reena Verma is one of a growing number of female fans either buying tickets to India’s glitzy Twenty20 tournament or watching on television where the voices of women commentators are increasingly being heard alongside their male counterparts.
Former India women’s captain Anjum Chopra, ex-England seamer Isa Guha and the Australians Lisa Sthalekar and Melanie Jones have been regulars in this year’s IPL commentary booths, sidelining male veterans of cricket broadcasting such as Harsha Bhogle.
The commentators are part of an IPL strategy to attract more women,
Verma
Hafeez for the test series against England as selectors named 21 probables for next week’s skill camp.
Hafeez missed the two-week fitness training camp at an army academy in Abbottabad and chief selector Inzamam-ulHaq said Wednesday that Hafeez’s place with the aim of increasing ticket sales, domestic television viewing ratings home and overall revenues.
A glance round the IPL grounds suggests around a third of fans are female. “I would definitely say the number of women watching the game has increased in India,” Colonel Menon from private company Skidata, which provides crowd data to the IPL, told AFP, although he was unable to provide exact figures on the ratio of female to male spectators.
While the cheerleaders who celebrate every four and six do still attract interest from male fans, many spectators’ eyes are drawn instead to the women celebrities populating the executive boxes or team dugouts.
They include Bollywood actress Preity Zinta, who co-owns the Kings XI Punjab, and Nita Ambani, the wife of the country’s richest man Mukesh Ambani and who is the principal of the Mumbai Indians franchise.
Sponsors have been taking note, with the agricultural food producer Cargill Foods India tying up with the new Rising Pune Supergiants team to have the logo of its Gemini sunflower oil on players’ helmets.
Although it is nearly three decades since the Barbadian lawyer Donna Symmonds became the first female commentator to cover Test cricket, women often still have to contend with sexism from players or male colleagues.
will be decided once he gets results of a fresh scan of the batsman’s injured knee.
“Today, doctors did fresh scans of Hafeez’s injured knee and we will take a final decision once we get the report,” Inzamam said. “He (Hafeez) is a senior player and we would like him to be in the squad.”