By Himadri Sarkar
At the stroke of Midnight on 2nd of November, the whole nation was awake to witness history in the making. Our girls scripted and recreated history which was akin to what our men’s team achieved in 1983. That was India’s first World cup win and this was the first World cup win by our girls. There are similarities between both cup wins. In 1983 India was almost out of the tournament when Kapil Dev played that unforgettable and unbeaten knock of 175 against Zimbabwe and went on to win the cup beating mighty West indies in the final. Now, in 2025 too, India was about to be eliminated after 3 consecutive losses but came back strongly to beat 7 times cup champions Australia in the semifinal to win the cup beating South Africa in the final. In the semifinal, Harmanpreet played a scintillating knock of 87 against Australia to get the team to the final.
But the road to this glory was not so smooth as Indian women made a late entry to international cricket. It all started in the early 70’s when one Mahendra Sharma formed WCAI( Women’s cricket Association of India as its founder secretary. Hamida Habibullah was its first President. The first national level tournament was held in 1973 and gradually it started organizing zonal level tournament named Rani Jhansi trophy and state level tournaments were also held. WCAI was given recognition by IWCC ( International Women’s Cricket Conference) in 1974 but BCCI never recognized it till 2006 when it was merged as women’s wing. Despite all these recognition, women’s cricket in India did not get going mainly due to lack of funds and sponsorship till Hero Honda came forward to sponsor and India hosted the first World Cup in 1997. All cricket playing nations participated which was won by Australia. Before that Indian team took their first overseas trip to New Zealand in 1995 which was won by India. Ironically this national team could not find a sponsor and the whole team was hosted by resident Indians who funded everything. Almost similarly, the next foreign tour to England was sponsored by film actress Mandira Bedi who spent a large sum from her endorsement earnings. This series was also won by India. Stalwarts of these two series were Diana Eduljee, Shanta Rangaswami, Sudha Shah, Subhangi Kulkarni, Sandhya Agarwal to name a few who ruled the roost at that time. Later, the baton was passed on to the likes of Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, Anjum Chopra and many others. Despite their marvelous efforts and winning important matches, they were not compensated handsomely as compared to today’s girls. They used to travel by train and were often lodged in stadium dormitories or women’s college hostels. But things changed for good when WCAI merged with BCCI( richest sporting body in the world). Funds started flowing and BCCI started gradation and salary system for national level players and commenced investing in women’s cricket infrastructure and logistics. More people started taking to cricket and took the game as their career option. To give an idea of how much National level players are earning nowadays, the following table makes a statement
Test Matches— 15L; ODI’S—6L; T20’s—3 L
( The figures are fees per match and are same as men’s teams)
Fixed Salaries
Grade A—- 50L / Annum( Smriti, Harman, Deepti; Grade B— 30L/ Annum( Jeminah, Richa); Grade C— 10 L / annum ( Radha, Renuka and some more).
Apart from these front ranking players like Smriti earns 3.5 crore from WPL earnings.
Harmanpreet too earns 1.8 crore from WPL. These apart, top players earn many crore from endorsements. BCCI& ICC also promised 51L & 40L respectively to the team after they won the World Cup.
But things were not so rosy for those who played the game during initial days. They played the game for the love of it.
Let us now focus on how women’s cricket evolved in undivided Bihar state. It was started by the late Tarun Bose( popularly known as Dipuda) whose passion for cricket convinced some girls in Jamshedpur to take up the game just for love of this sport. Dipuda’s dad, late Bijoy Bose was General Secretary of BCA( Bihar Cricket Association) for 10 consecutive terms and his uncle, late Bimal Bose ( Potlada) captained the Bihar Ranji team. Dipuda himself represented TISCO in local A division league matches. He motivated some 20 girls from different areas of Jamshedpur and started practicing at JCA ground and later on shifted to JWC ground. He then started practice matches between teams which resulted in future Bihar state players namely Dipti Karmakar( now Sarkar), Shukla Kar, Sagarika Shome, Bratati Bangabash, Saswati Mukherjee, Charanjeet Kaur, Kavita Roy, Mamata Singh, Seema Desai all of whom played for Bihar and the last five played for India too. Dipti was named first Captain of newly formed Bihar state team who played their first match against Bengal at Keenan Stadium which Bengal won. Some more girls started coming in and then an University level tournament was initiated by naming it as Chancellor Shield, the first of which was won by Ranchi University team led by Dipti. This way women’s cricket started gaining popularity and when Rani Jhansi Trophy( an inter zonal tournament ) was introduced by WCAI in 1994, all games were played at Kanpur. East Zone too participated. From Bihar only five were selected namely Dipti, Shukla, Charanjeet, Sagarika and Saswati while the rest were from Bengal. The East Zone team was led by Sreerupa Bose of Bengal. This first Rani Jhansi trophy was won by South Zone which had players like Sudha Shah and Shanta Rangaswami in their fold. Shanta later on captained India and also won an Arjuna Award. Thereafter Bihar again played in the nationals played at Eden Gardens, Kolkata (Calcutta). This time too Dipti led Bihar team but went out at knock out stage being beaten by Maharashtra. This is how Bihar women’s cricket evolved and when the state of Jharkhand came into being in 2000, there was total chaos about team selection and some irregularities in managing funds were also detected. Thereafter focus shifted from Jamshedpur to Ranchi when Amitabh Choudhary formed JSCA (Jharkhand State Cricket Association) and matches started being held at JSCA Stadium at Ranchi which is a bigger and better stadium than Keenan of Jamshedpur. It is ironical that the person who initiated birth of Women’s cricket in Bihar could not see the day which he fought for throughout his life and that is merger of WCAI with BCCI. Dipuda died of a massive heart attack in 2005. Dipuda would spend money from his pocket, took donations from local businessmen to see that women’s cricket thrived in this part of the country.
The World Cup win by our girls in November 2025 will open the floodgates and more girls would now be tempted to take up cricket as their careers. It is also heartening to see that once when girls played at renowned stadiums with hardly 10% of the capacity but now, spectator interest has generated so much that all India matches ensured full houses. Good days are in store for women cricketers in India.
(The views expressed are personal opinion of the author.)
