Former India Cricketer Snehal Pradhan On The Way Ahead For The Women In Blue
I was an active player until 2015, when I retired to increase focus on and publicity of the women’s cricket team. Therefore, I chose the field of media.
The 2017 Women’s World Cup final was painful for all of us. I was in the press box for that final, one of three Indians covering the tournament at a time when few reporters were writing or talking about it. After the tournament, a few of us asked ourselves what can we do for women’s cricket in India? To understand what the community of female cricketers was saying, we conducted a survey with 350+ cricketers who were already playing for their states.
One of the big gaps, we realised, is a lack of knowledge about pathways. For example, a young boy who wants to play cricket for India knows how to get into a club, play inter-club matches, get selected for district, perform well, and play for the state and so on.
Girls don’t know where their local academy is or whether it will take women. After the academy, are there women’s teams to play inter-club matches, and when are the district selections conducted? There is a shocking lack of information. To fill these gaps, we created The Equal Hue website.
We launched a guide for girls. The next step is to create a national under-16 tournament for girls.
We are piloting a project to see if we can fill the gap and complement the under-19, under-23 and senior age groups that already exist for women’s cricket.
There is so much young talent waiting to erupt and they don’t have the infrastructure that they need. We can wait for infrastructure to be created by people in charge or we can see what we can do. That is what we are trying with The Equal Hue project.
One thing that BCCI has done well is to conduct the women’s matches at same standards as that of men. Two years ago, match fees for female domestic cricketers were increased from Rs 2500 per match to Rs 12500 per match. But the match fees for male domestic cricketers is Rs 35000 per day. During the pandemic, male cricketers have gone to Australia, England has come to India and are playing a series in Ahmedabad and Pune whereas the women’s team did not play any international games the entire year. The BCCI needs to do more.
TO WATCH SNEHAL PRADHAN’S TALK, CLICK HERE