Cricket is not just a man's game, it's everybody's!

For quite some time now, cricket has been associated with the male section of the society. Whether you’re a player or an expert of the game or a supporter, if you say “cricket”, you should have the deep baritone of a man. It’s about time this misconstrued perception was erased. With progress being the motto all around, be it socio-economic or cultural, a fresh perspective on women being as much fans of the sport as men, is much needed.

If we look close enough and conduct a thorough scrutiny, women followers of the game, albeit less in number, are not altogether a non-existent entity. In spite of it being difficult for them to get due acknowledgement for being so, the true ones are rarely disheartened by the lack of it. All that matters to them, like everybody else, is cricket!

The same stereotypical jibes

Cricket, as recognized by the International Cricket Council (ICC) is played by over 125 nations worldwide. Almost everywhere, if you’re a man, all you need to do is throw in a couple of technical terms like “Outside the off-stump”, “Above waist-height” and voila, you’re an established person in the cricket following fraternity! But if you’re a woman, you’ll most likely have to face bullet-like questions to make people believe that you have some minuscule proportion of idea about it.

If you’re a girl who loves the sport of the bat and the ball to infinity and beyond, you probably have faced all those indulgent smiles from your peers, at some point in your life. How many times have you tried to take part in a heated cricket debate and been scoffed at by your elder brother? And how about the time when you predicted which team might win that particular edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and your classmate sitting next to you chimed in, “Do you even have an idea about what we’re talking about? It’s cricket, nothing we expect you to know.”

Low interest about cricket among women and its effects

The root cause of this ignorant attitude towards female cricket fans is essentially the lack of a good fan base of the sport among them. On an average, women tend to be bored or simply, disinterested about the sport. As a collateral damage, the ones that really are, are rarely taken seriously.

Often, misogynistic treatment can be seen at very young ages, sometimes even among the school-goers. Habits of bullying girls who express their interest in cricket are notoriously at large. It might be simply shooting down her claims downright, by making it sound ludicrous in front of her peers or by asking her bamboozling questions, about facts that might not have taken place in the cricketing history at all.

Understandably, this sort of prejudiced mentality cannot be considered as a favourable habitat for cultivation of cricketing interest among women. Many instances have been observed, where girls take to cricket at an early age, but gradually lose interest in the following years, only to become completely oblivious to the sport in future.

Even the experts aren’t spared

It’s incredulous how women involved in cricket, be it experts or fans, are judged mostly on the basis of their accent or their dress sense, rather than being credited for their knowledge of the sport. Just a year back, popular TV cricket anchor, Mayanti Langer was a victim of criticism on the social media for her choice of outfits while anchoring the pre and post-match sessions during the Champions Trophy.

Mandira Bedi, one of India’s first female cricket anchors in the early 2000s, received more comments on her fashion sense than on her sports commentary. As reported by First Post, in an interview in 2008, she said, “People were not used to seeing a woman fielding questions on cricket.” She further added that it was all the handiwork of people who had difficulty in accepting a woman doing well in a field that was known to be dominated by men.”

Vaneisa Baksh is a renowned cricket expert, having been the editor of UWI Today in Trinidad and written columns for various leading cricketing journals. She has had her own share of having to deal with opposition throughout her career. In her essay “Inside Sexism”for The Cricket Monthly, she related how she had been deliberately denied from getting a membership of Queen’s Park Cricket Club on the grounds of being a woman.

Very recently, sports writer Sarah Waris spoke up on social media about being allegedly subject to harassment at the hands of a renowned male journalist who’s well-known in the global cricketing circuit. What makes it even horrifying is the fact that she’s not the first victim of this particular journalist nor is she the last. Whether this treatment arises out of a basic sick mentality or because of the accused being unable to handle a female being proficient in the field, the incident is disturbing, to say the least.

Here’s what Sarah Waris tweeted:

As I get more and more support on this, I know the world isn't such a bad place after all. pic.twitter.com/4UkLlIQZRH

— sarah waris (@swaris16) July 5, 2018

The rebels

But just like in there are some reliable rebels in every sphere of life, there are just as many as in cricket. There always are some women, who fall in love with cricket too irrevocably to let social perceptions make them give up on it. They learn the game without even having set foot on a gully cricket pitch, let alone a proper cricketing ground.

These females fans of cricket are just as knowledgeable about the sport as their male counterparts, with the ability to crunch out game statistics and elucidate on the nitty-gritties of cricketing techniques, even while half asleep. Many of them have probably only held their best friends’ bat only once in their lifetime, but would still be able to tell you the exact back lift you need to have for a cover drive.

There’s still hope

What needs to be understood is that women and cricket are not as easily discernible as oil and water. Letting them in into the world of cricket with proper accreditation would only mean an expansion in the sport-following population. In recent times, with proper channeling of interest in women’s cricket, the situations for a female fan of the game has considerably improved. There has been an influx of women in every sphere of it. In early 2017, former English women’s cricketer Isa Guha made history by becoming the first woman to be on the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) board.

As a result, the spectrum for cricket fans has increased and women are no longer seen as an intrusion into the men’s fan club. There are a large number of men, who acknowledge the presence of women in the cricketing arena and treat their cricketing opinions with respect, putting them on a strong foothold. The number of people who opine in such a manner is only on the rise, making the world of Cricket a bigger and better community of undivided and strong-knit worshippers of the game, above and beyond everything else.