Women at play | Aditya Bhushan's 'Her Story, Her Glory'
Aditya Bhushan's Her Story, Her Glory is a timely history of women's cricket in India
They call it the gentlemen’s game, which is perhaps why it took 57 years for the first women’s Test cricket match to take place—in 1934 in Brisbane, between Australia and England—after the men from the two countries had played their first Test match in 1877. We did not fare any better—the Indian women’s team’s debut similarly came in 1976, while their male counterparts had already opened their innings at Lord’s in 1932, 44 years prior to them.
They call it the gentlemen’s game, which is perhaps why it took 57 years for the first women’s Test cricket match to take place—in 1934 in Brisbane, between Australia and England—after the men from the two countries had played their first Test match in 1877. We did not fare any better—the Indian women’s team’s debut similarly came in 1976, while their male counterparts had already opened their innings at Lord’s in 1932, 44 years prior to them.
For an unduly long span of time, women’s cricket did not receive the attention or respect it deserved, especially in India. All that started to change exactly two decades ago, when the Women’s Cricket Association of India was merged into the BCCI in 2006. They finally had proper funds and the world was watching.
Cricket writer Aditya Bhushan’s Her Story, Her Glory–I’m guessing, commissioned after our spectacular World Cup win in November last year, when we beat South Africa by 52 runs–is a timely, well-researched and digestible history of women’s cricket in India. It may have been late to bloom, but Indian women’s cricket has well and truly found its rightful spot in the world of sport today.
