Wonder women: An origin story

Harmanpreet Kaur, the captain of the team that won the ODI World Cup comes from Moga, Punjab, the daughter of a volleyball player turned court clerk.

- Samreen Razzaqui

Smriti Mandhana, who has effortlessly transformed from a precocious teen talent to a reliable match winner comes from Sangli, Maharashtra, where her father once played district-level cricket.

The player of the tournament, Deepti Sharma comes from Agra, Uttar Pradesh, and her brother abandoned his own fast-bowling dreams to coach her. And from Rohtak, Haryana, comes destiny’s child Shafali Varma, who once disguised herself as a boy to escape the derision of neighbours, and who turned in a magical performance on the most important night of her career.

They aren’t the only ones. Draw a map of where India’s women world champions come from, and it will rarely pass through metros or large cities. Instead, it will take you to Moga and Rohtak, Sangli and Siliguri (West Bengal), Golaghat (Assam) and Ghuwara (Madhya Pradesh). It will pass through fields, terraces, courtyards and backyards, far from the cricket powerhouses but in many ways, the real nurseries of India’s women’s cricket.

For it takes a country.

Standing steadfast behind them are fathers who carved bats for their daughters with their own hands, single mothers who raised them all on their own, and brothers who traded their own futures for their sisters’ chances ~ all fire walling the eventual world champions from a blizzard of patriarchal censure and structural barriers that often make the difference between promise and performance for women, and not just in sports, in India.

For it takes a family.