On Sunday, March 8, that big night for Indian women's cricket, victory proved elusive because champions Australia were just too good for the challengers. Harmanpreet Kaur's India had not lost a single match till that final, but their undefeated run in the ICC Twenty20 World Cup didn't break the stride of Meg Lanning's team. This was Australia's fifth world title in the women's game.
For Indian cricket fans and the team, the loss might have been a crushing disappointment in the immediate aftermath. India's new find, 16-year-old Shafali Verma, who lit up the tournament with her effervescent batting, couldn't hold back the tears. That image will linger in public memory. But the true setback for Indian women's cricket was that a tournament title might have catalysed the movement to back the women's team with resources of the kind that might produce champions.
Till very recently, the women's team received little more than lip service from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The game was run in an ad hoc manner, coaching staff were hired and fired willy-nilly, women cricketers had access to only a fraction of the vast resources at the disposal of their male counterparts and visibility for their matches was an afterthought.
What we kept hearing was that there wasn't a viable audience for women's cricket. The lack of big hitting, the slower nature of the game, the absence of muscularity and express fast bowling were repeatedly cited as reasons why the game would never be a mass-market phenomenon. But this mythology slowly began to fade with the coming of Twenty20 cricket, and the forging of a young Indian team -- the average age of the squad at the World Cup was 22.8 years and it included four teenagers.
This edition of the World Cup provided some exciting cricket, and the fans responded in numbers. Before the tournament, the record attendance for a standalone women's match in Australia was less than 7,000. At the final, 87,164 people filled the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and those present might testify that the atmosphere was far more electric than last year's men's World Cup final at Lord's. Outside the grounds, on television, social media and websites, the women's World Cup shattered viewership records. Young Verma impressed so much so fast that she was picked up by Pepsi to endorse their product.
For some time now, there has been demand to start up a women's version of the IPL (Indian Premier League). The successful women's leagues in Australia and England have greatly benefitted their players. The virtues of exposure to a big stage, and the toughening experience of performing in high-pressure conditions on a regular basis, are hard to exaggerate. In India, only baby steps have been taken so far in this regard, with the IPL play-offs featuring women's exhibition matches. The elusive World Cup victory might have been the impetus needed to institute a women's tournament, which now has several advocates, including Sunil Gavaskar, who recently said a women's IPL might be the way to tap talent.
But others closely associated with the women's game are sceptical of launching such a tournament at this juncture. Even with four foreign imports in each team, it would be hard to put on more than three teams, a stretch to get four quality sides, to conduct a tournament where match quality is not terribly uneven. To rush into it, conservatives argue, would put unfair pressure on the women's game, open it up to all sorts of criticism, and more prejudice, and may, in fact, hold back its development. In a few years, it should certainly be possible to hold an independent women's IPL in India. But for that to happen, work must begin at the lower rungs now, to strengthen the base of players who compete seriously, empower those who play it professionally to give more time to the sport, and have a robust structure in place to identify, groom and support talent before it meets opportunity under the harsh glare of the bright lights.