Women Share How Difficult It Was For Them To Learn Cricket & It’s A Comment On Society

The World Cup final last night didn’t end with an outcome that the Indian audience wanted. However, there was more that happened, or what we observed. We saw families of our players supporting them from the stands, and then after the match. It was a heartwarming visual, and anyone would appreciate it. So, a comment by Harbhajan Singh understandbly triggered a lot of people – espeically women. When the camera panned towards Anushka Sharma and Athiya Shetty, the commentator said: “Shayad filmon ki baatein ho rahi hain ya cricket ki, pata nahin cricket ki kitni samajh hogi.”

The fact that he assumed that women wouldn’t understand cricket was extremely sexist. It was also ignorant of him to do it on national television, and to disrespect the work that those women do. That said, it’s also normal to not understand cricket. This is not about feeding into the narrative that women don’t get it, this is about the fact that women can show just as much interest in the sport. On the other hand, many women who don’t, are conditioned by the society to not develop it from a very young age.

So, we talked to some women about cricket. And here’s what they had to say:

1. “Most women that I know are very much interested in watching cricket. As for me, I am not a big fan. So I believe it’s more interest-based than ‘not knowing about the game’. That said, I also believe that leaving everything and watching a match is a luxury that not many women can afford. Hence, most women are unable to develop an interest as they don’t get the time to watch a match.”

– Vedika Negi

2. There’s no room to be wrong. if you’re watching it with your male relatives, they’ll ridicule you and crack ‘jokes’ if you say one wrong thing. It’s only when you find someone patient enough to explain things to you that you start redeveloping that interest. Or at least that’s what happened with me.

– Prakriti Srivastava

3. “‘Sport’ as an activity has always been ‘conventionally’ reserved for men. It starts from home and school itself when men are motivated for their role in sports and women either get demeaned or are not acknowledged enough. Of course, this does not happen everywhere but it’s LARGELY present. With the popularity that Cricket has in India, there’s a reason why Men’s cricket teams captures exponential times more attention and recognition than women’s teams. I vividly remember this scene in Chak De! India when this head of Indian Hockey undermined the women’s team and said, “ye lota-belan chalane wali bhartiya naariyan hain, kahan ye nicker-wicker pehen ke daudti firengi” – and it summed up the general ‘stereotypical’ desi temperament towards women in ALL sports. And a lot of it also gets internalized. It’s sad. However, undeniably, this is changing. But we still have a long road to travel.”

– Vasudha Sabharwal

4. “I never watched a cricket match because no one made me watch it. My brothers were asked to play, and watch with my father, but this didn’t happen with me.”

– Karuuna Ailawadi

5. “I do watch cricket now but when I used to try watching with my father as a kid, he’d take away all the fun from the sport. He used to get very serious, and it was not longer about enjoying.”

– Riya Verma

6. “The thing with cricket is that it can get easily aggressive. Fans get triggered by simple matches, especially in today’s time. I don’t like how a beautiful game turns us into hateful people. So, I never developed the habit of watching matches. I do regret not trying, anyway.”

– Anisha

7. “Men in my life never made me feel included. If I entered, trying to learn the game, they would tell me that it’s “tough” to understand. Indirectly telling me that I can’t get what was happening. It was demeaning and I never tried going back to the sport. I blame the people around me for not helping me establish an interest.”

– Bhawna Ailawadi

8. “When we associate something with men, my first instinct is to not do it. The same goes for cricket, so I never actually made the effort to see a match or learn cricket. It’s like our society tells us that it’s something for men, so I never wanted to indulge.”

– Gauri Arora

Something to think about.