From Sudha Shah to Smriti Mandhana

This is Part 1 of a 3 part feature that I wrote for Wisden India on women's cricket in India.

Part 1: Evolution

With the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) recently adding an Under-23 tournament for women in the domestic calendar, there is much excitement among players, both former and current.

“This will give the girls more of an opportunity to play,” says Sudha Shah, a veteran of 21 Tests and coach of the India Women team that beat England in a Test match at Wormsley last year. “It means that the jump from Under-19 to the senior level is not so drastic — we won’t lose too many players along the way.”

Of course, things weren’t always this structured with women’s cricket in India. When the women’s game took off in the country, in 1973-74, players like Shah, barely 15 years old, played only one open state tournament every year and there were certainly no age-group tournaments.

Despite this, the very next year, India began playing international cricket.

The Under-25 New Zealand and Australia teams toured India, and that helped the Indians gain a little international exposure, before the Indian women played their first official Test match in 1976.Between 1976 and 1986, international matches were played almost every year.

Playing matches continually not only meant that the players improved, it also put them in the public eye.

“In the beginning, people would just come out to see how the women played. Once they saw us win, they began to follow our cricket. Many players became quite well known. Mind you, in those days there was no television — it was just a lot of press coverage,” remembers Shah.

At the domestic level, though, things remained the same with only one major category of matches. There was an inter-state championship, after which the zonal teams were selected, and then there was an inter-zone tournament. It was only much later that the age-group tournaments began. And, as Shah says, the women did play a lot of matches at the college and the club levels.

One of the beneficiaries of these inter-college tournaments was Mamatha Maben, a former India captain who played through the 1990s till into the 2000s. “When I started, we played a lot of inter-collegiate cricket. I was lucky that the WCAI (Women’s Cricket Association of India) had introduced age-group tournaments. It was through good performances in the inter-college matches that I got selected for the junior (Under-19) state team.”

Club matches were also played frequently. “Before we played for the state, we used to play at least two or three tournaments involving college and club teams,” recalls Maben. “It was at that level that I really honed my skills and began to understand my game.”

Jhulan Goswami, the spearhead of India’s bowling attack, followed a similar path to Maben when she started out around the time Maben was finishing up. “When I started playing leather ball cricket in 1997, we used to have club matches twice a year in Bengal. If you did well in those, you found a place in the 30 probables for the state team,” says Goswami, whose career started when women’s cricket was run by the WCAI but then came under the aegis of the BCCI. “Obviously in terms of facilities there is a huge difference. Unfortunately, WCAI never had funds, but the BCCI has their own set up in place and their infrastructure is superb. As far as the cricket goes, much is the same. We still play high-quality cricket.”

Meanwhile, there has been an ongoing difference of opinion on whether there are enough games going around.

Many former players note that the women play fewer matches than they used to. The argument is based on the fact that there used to be an inter-state (round robin) tournament within each of the five zones, from which the top two teams qualified for the national championship, guaranteeing the states at least five to six matches. The top ten teams in the country, divided into two groups of five, would then face off in four more league encounters, after which the top two from each group would qualify for the knockout stage — the semifinals and the final. This format meant teams that qualified for the national tournament got to play at least ten matches. The change in format to an Elite/Plate divide has since meant that the top teams play only around seven matches, while those that don’t qualify for the knockouts must be satisfied with four or five matches (in each format).

Although the difference may not be drastic, the complaints are many. Goswami though, has a different opinion. “I think we still play the same amount of cricket. Even then we used to play only two or three state tournaments, but they used to happen at different times of the year, so it may have seemed like we played much more. Now we have two (state) tournaments, but they are back-to-back,” she points out. “We did play a lot of invitation tournaments back then — something that we don’t do much of now.”

Maben, who continued to play domestic cricket even after her international retirement in 2004, adds to what Goswami says, “Under the WCAI we did not have a Challenger Trophy, so that is something positive. Also, the Under-19 inter-zonals are new as well. A multi-day inter-zonal for the seniors is a positive move too. At the higher level, the BCCI has introduced more tournaments. The only real issue is that there is no Under-16 event (apart from in the south), which means fewer youngsters are coming into the sport.”

Smriti Mandhana is one of the lucky ones to have graduated quickly and not suffered because of the absence of an age-group tournament. © Getty Images

It was against this backdrop that young Smriti Mandhana, still only 19, took her first steps towards playing for Maharashtra. “I started playing when I was six years old. My older brother played cricket too, so I used to accompany him,” says the young batter. “I played one school nationals (Under-15) when I was 11 years old. Other than that, there was no school or Under-16 cricket for me.”

Playing Under-19 cricket as a 12 year old may have been difficult for Mandhana, but an initiative from the Maharashtra Cricket Association made the transition easier. “After my first couple of years playing Under-19, we had (senior) zone tournaments within Maharashtra (five zones) and I was able to play with Anagha Deshpande and Swarupa Kadam, who were both in and around the Indian team. I learnt a lot from them — lessons that have held me in good stead,” she says.

Mandhana is one of the lucky ones to have graduated quickly and not suffered because of the absence of an age-group tournament, but how many girls out there would be able to break into their state senior teams at the age of 12?

Having started off as a two-tournament season, the women’s domestic structure has certainly evolved. The girls now have multiple age-group tournaments and formats too. Maben sees exciting times ahead for the girls. “I feel BCCI is warming up to us — it took them some time, but they are now far more proactive than they were at the start,” she says. A little more could, of course, help, and maybe the Under-16 nationals should be the next step.