History of Women’s Cricket in India:

Cricket is one of the most popular sport around the world. With 3 billion global and 1 billion Indian followers,  the impact of game around the world is too damn high. Although much spotlight has habitually put on men’s cricket, more is now being given to the women’s team.

Speaking on the History of Women’s Cricket in India, Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI) was registered in 1973 and received the Government recognition in 1978.  It was one of the major step in Women’s cricket and they initiated to set up Inter State National Championships.

The first Women’s Inter State National Championship was held at Pune in April 1973. A total of three teams participated in the championship (Mumbai, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh).

The second championship which was held at Varanasi had a participation of 8 teams, was increased to 14 teams by the third edition. Later, the cricketers were employed by Indian Railways and Air India and they took part as separate teams.

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Road To International Cricket:

The Women in Blues made their test debut in 1976 against West Indies. The first test victory of the team was in the same year against the same team at Patna in front of 25,000 spectators.

The debut match in One Day Internationals (ODIs) was at 1978 World Cup. Since then, the team had made the final of the ODI World Cups twice. Unfortunately lost on both occasions (losing to Australia by 98 runs in 2005 and losing to England by 9 runs in 2017).

The Women’s Cricket Team gathered their pace after their outrageous performance in the 2017 World Cup in England. They had also reached the finals of T20 World Cup which was held earlier this year.

Women’s Cricket is legitimately on the rise. Let’s look at the legendary players that took women’s cricket forward:

Mithali Raj

One of the name that comes to our mind whenever we hear Indian Women’s Cricket. Mithali Raj is one of the modern heroes of the Indian cricket and one of the best batters of women’s cricket. She has more than 8000 International runs in her account and is also the highest run-scorer in world cricket in ODIs.

Mithali Raj is the only Indian batsman to be ranked as No.1 in both ODIs and T20Is. Women’s Cricket in India wouldn’t be same without the contributions of the pioneer of Women’s cricket.

Shubangi Kulkarni

Shubangi Kulkarni is one of the cricketer who played the debut International match for Indian Women’s Cricket. She was a right handed all rounder who could pummel good knocks and take wickets with her leg spin magic. She made her ODI debut in 1978 against New Zealand.  In her 15 years long International career, she has scored 1,047 runs and grabbed 98 wickets.

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Shubangi Kulkarni was the secretary of the Women’s Cricket Association of India when WCAI was merged into BCCI in 2006.

Shantha Rangaswamy

Shantha Rangaswamy was the skipper of Indian Women’s Cricket Team which won their first test match in November 1976 against West Indies at the Moin-ul-Haq Stadium in Patna. She has appeared in 16 test matches for the national side, captaining in 12 matches. She has also played in 19 Women’s One Day International matches for India.

Shanta Rangaswamy has received Arjuna Award for her outstanding achievement in the sport. She is also the   first Indian female cricketer to represent the Indian Cricketers Association and the BCCI Apex Council.

And that’s all on History of Women’s Cricket in India