Women In Blue Script History

India’s victory in the final of the ICC ODI World Cup Women’s Championship against South Africa at Navi Mumbai on Sunday will open up whole new vistas for women’s cricket in India.

This is not to say other women’s sports in India have lagged behind. In fact, since the glory days of PT Usha in athletics in the 1980s, our sportswomen have been at the forefront in many fields, including tennis, badminton, table tennis, shooting, boxing and wrestling.

But in India—for better or for worse—it is success in cricket that elevates a sportsperson to stratospheric heights, and in that sense the women’s team have finally fulfilled their potential after falling short on many occasions. There can be no complaints on their part as far as facilities and remuneration are concerned. The BCCI has been at the forefront of world cricket in granting women pay parity with the men, and the launch of the WPL in 2023 opened up new vistas for female cricketers.

If behind every successful man there is a woman, as the saying goes, behind this women’s team’s success there are two men who stand out: coach Amol Muzumdar, who was distinctly unlucky not to win an India Test cap and who guided this team through choppy waters, and Jay Shah, currently chairman of the ICC, who, as president of the BCCI, laid the groundwork for Sunday’s triumph by ensuring all the facilities and privileges made available to male cricketers were accessible to women too.

In fact, it was third time lucky for India—having failed to win the 50-over final on two previous occasions (2005 and 2017). They were distinctly lucky this time to make it to the semifinals after losing three matches in the league stage to South Africa, England, and Australia. They had beaten Sri Lanka and Pakistan and then faced a must-win virtual quarter-final in the penultimate match against New Zealand. They duly won that to dump the Kiwis out of the championship. But the Kiwis were left to curse their bad luck, as two of their matches, against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in Colombo, which they were heavily fancied to win, were washed out, forcing them to share points.

The victory over the hitherto-considered invincible Australia in the semifinal, though, was one for the ages, as the six-time defending champions saw India chase down a world record total. As their captain, Alyssa Healy, admitted after the defeat, it was a most “un-Australian”-like performance by the champs, as they muffed easy catches galore.

As for South Africa, it now appears the tag of chokers, hitherto attached to their men’s team, is in fact gender neutral. Despite their captain Laura Wolvaardt’s gallant century in the final and world record of most runs in the championship, they were always playing catch-up to the eventual champions in the final.