The Right Pitch

How Mayanti Langer found her footing in the male-dominated world of Indian sports broadcasting.

- Rajiv Singh

Pressure is a privilege, believed American tennis star Billie Jean King.

When she was 11, she was not allowed to be part of a tournament group photo for not wearing a tennis skirt. King went on to win 39 Grand Slam titles in a career that spanned 25 years.

Known for her iconoclastic views, in September 1973, 29-year-old King took on former World No 1 Bobby Riggs, 55, in what was billed as the ‘Battle of the Sexes’, after Riggs claimed that women’s tennis was so inferior to men’s that even someone as old as him could beat the current top women players. In the match that was watched by over 90 million people across the world, King thrashed Riggs in straight sets.

“Pressure,” King wrote, “only comes to those who earn it”, in a book on her experiences, called Pressure Is A Privilege, published in 2008.

Cut to 2019, India. As she completes her 12th year of anchoring India’s biggest sporting event, the Indian Premier League (IPL), Mayanti Langer, 34, has carved out a niche for herself in the male-dominated profession of sports broadcasting and anchoring. “I don’t have a great story, but yes, it’s a different story,” she says.

Langer, who was born in Delhi into an army family and had no family members associated with the sporting world, is the only Indian woman broadcaster to have hosted six World Cups across three sports— hockey, football and cricket. She had been working with Zee Sports for three years when she got to be a guest anchor for a Fifa beach football event; but Langer’s first big break was hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup for ESPN, alongside the likes of John Dykes. Alan Wilkins and Dykes, she says, were role models for presenters. “I didn’t see them as male presenters, but as sports presenters.”