Cricket ceased to be a gentleman’s game long ago. It’s played by men, but, it is as much a woman’s sport today. India’s Class of 2025 announced that loud and clear Sunday midnight, as their infectious joy on winning the World Cup was beamed into homes across the country. It has been compared to the 1983 moment for men’s cricket in India, when Kapil’s Devils stormed Lord’s and defeated an all-time great West Indian side. The euphoria of the ’83
Cricket ceased to be a gentleman’s game long ago. It’s played by men, but, it is as much a woman’s sport today. India’s Class of 2025 announced that loud and clear Sunday midnight, as their infectious joy on winning the World Cup was beamed into homes across the country. It has been compared to the 1983 moment for men’s cricket in India, when Kapil’s Devils stormed Lord’s and defeated an all-time great West Indian side. The euphoria of the ’83 win, in a country where the only previous world champion was Ajit Pal Singh’s hockey team of 1975, kick-started cricket’s transformation into a mass sport. The 1987 World Cup, played at home, telecast nationwide and packaged as entertainment, was truly the moment cricket transcended its elite, metro origins and began to find fans outside the big cities. The IPL was the culmination of that journey when cricket turned into an aspiration sport, a ticket out of rural misery and urban poverty, for many starry-eyed young people.
Harmanpreet Kaur’s Class of 2025 illustrates this story even better. Kaur is from Moga, Punjab, and her deputy, Smriti Mandhana, hails from Sangli, a small town in western Maharashtra’s sugar belt. There’s Kranti Gaud from Ghuwara, Uma Chetry from Golaghat, Shree Charani from Kadapa, and Richa Ghosh from Siliguri. Mumbai and Delhi, and state capitals such as Dehradun, Chandigarh, Shimla and Hyderabad are represented, but the team is more a microcosm of India’s geographical spread and economic diversity. The players represent the hopes of single mothers and rural families that scraped out resources to ensure that their wards got to live out their dreams. This transformation of cricket as a pan-Indian, class-agnostic sport is an empowering story that calls for celebration. It has enormous social and economic implications for a nation where many still see the girl child as a burden. The Class of 2025 are role models, and evidence of the potential of India’s girls and women.
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