Sharda Ugra

Sharda Ugra has been a sports journalist for over 35 years. She started her career with Mumbai tabloid Mid-Day before working with national daily The Hindu, India Today magazine and ESPNcricinfo.com / ESPN India. She has written and spoken about issues around Indian sport in conferences and publications at home and abroad and researched and reported on the role of ethnic minority cricket in England and Australia. She worked with former New Zealand captain John Wright on John Wright’s Indian Summers, his memoirs of his years coaching India and with Yuvraj Singh on The Test of My Life, an account of his diagnosis and recovery from cancer. She was a fellow of the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne in 2013 and was a part of the International Cricket Council’s 100% Cricket Future Leaders Programme as a mentee for two years.

Currently, she is a sports columnist with the Hindustan Times, Delhi and BBC World Service's Hindi website and also contributes the Wisden Almanack, the India Forum and many other platforms.

Alongside following the big headline events and their before and after, she tracks grassroots developments and off the beaten track life stories in the furthest corners of the country, and sporting governance patterns in India.