11-05-2025
'We still have to fight' - Shantha Rangaswamy, Mithali Raj and Shreyanka Patil on women's cricket at The Hindu Huddle
Stars from three generations — Shantha Rangaswamy, Mithali Raj, and Shreyanka Patil — engaged in a lively discussion at The Hindu Huddle on Friday on the growth of women's cricket in India.
Shantha, the first Indian women's team captain, spoke about her pioneering role. 'We laid the foundation. We may not have seen the likes of Mithali and Shreyanka if we had faltered in the initial stages. What drove us was the passion for the game,' Shantha said in a session titled 'No Boundaries: Growth of Women's Cricket in India', moderated by K.C. Vijaya Kumar, Sports Editor, The Hindu.
In a glittering international career, which spanned over two decades, Mithali moved the needle in terms of popularising women's cricket.
Mithali said the turning point for the sport came in 2006, when the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) took control of women's cricket. 'In my early days, when the Women's Cricket Association of India (WCAI) ran the sport, the financial aspect was not great. It was a struggle to get investors and endorsements for us to have an international series. Coming under the BCCI was huge, because that opened access to better infrastructure, resources, equipment, and domestic structure,' Mithali said.
Coming under the BCCI umbrella gave Mithali and others access to top-class facilities like the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru. At the NCA, interactions between women cricketers and stalwarts like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid proved to be invaluable. 'When you have a dialogue with the likes of Sachin and Dravid, you learn a lot,' Mithali said.
