Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s team are not the sole Indian cricket representatives in the tough environs of Australia. On Tuesday, the Indian women’s cricket team had a far better start to their Australian sojourn than their male compatriots – they gunned down 141 against Australia, their highest chase in Twenty20 cricket in the first Twenty20 in Adelaide.
Then on Friday, captain Mithali Raj's band of young women went a step further. They won the second Twenty20 in Melbourne as well, reducing Australia to 125/8 in 18 overs and chasing a reduced total to win the three-match series.
The triumph was both heart-warming and unexpected. Because, while India are the financial centre of world cricket, they have a women's team which has not seen a lot of success. On the International Cricket Council Women’s Championship points table, the Indian eves are rated a lowly seventh, only above Sri Lanka. Hence the series win against Australia, currently top of the table, is cause for massive celebration.
Indifferent form
The focus currently is on the upcoming World Twenty20 championships where the women’s team will be looking to erase an indifferent record. At the last two editions of the tournament in 2012 and 2014, the team failed to get past the group stages. The run in bad form is not restricted to just the Twenty20 format – at the last Women’s World Cup in 2013, India finished bottom of their group, below England, Sri Lanka and West Indies.
In the longer versions, the team draws a blank, but for no fault of their own. For reasons best known to the custodians of the game in the country, the Indian women’s cricket team did not play a Test match for eight years from 2006 to 2014. However since their return, they have put in impressive performances in the two solitary Tests they played – defeating England in England in 2014 and then South Africa at home.
An exciting mix of youth and experience
On a positive note though, recent results have pointed to a resurgence. Before the Twenty20 series win in Australia, the team showed considerable mettle in June to fight back from 2-1 down to win the One Day International series at home against New Zealand, ranked second in the world. Captained by the veteran Mithali Raj, one of the finest ever cricketers in women’s cricket, the team finally seems to have hit upon the best combination of youth and experience.
The other veteran alongside Raj in the team is the lanky Jhulan Goswami who has been one of the team’s most consistent performers. But there are also some exciting youngsters within the squad. The talented Harmanpreet Kaur, who scored a match-winning 46 off just 31 balls in the first Twenty20, is one such prospect. Then there is the 19-year old opener Smriti Mandhana who already has three half-centuries to her name in just 15 ODIs.
With the introduction of central contracts for women cricketers last year, Indian women cricketers finally have a source of financial stability from the game. The next step for the Board of Control for Cricket in India should be to take a leaf out of Australia and England’s books and try and popularise the women’s game in the country.
The first step to that would be to hold a women’s version of the wildly-successful Indian Premier League, something which Australia has already successfully experimented with. Captain Mithali Raj referred to that during a recent press conference and hoped that a good performance by the team in the upcoming World Twenty20 would give fillip to such an idea. The recent Justice Lodha recommendations also chastised the BCCI for not doing more for the state of women’s cricket in the country. A bit of attention from the powers that be and Mithali Raj and her band of young women could still yet convert all that potential into performance.