Dreaming of the big leagues

We met the two sisters in a small village a thousand kilometers away from where the main event took place.

India just had one new women’s cricket league, attracting a whopping $500 million in private investment, and it felt like a big moment. A career in sports for young women was no longer just a dream. Now there could be economic opportunity – even stardom.

Most of the players on the glamorous new stage came from humble small-town backgrounds, like Harmanpreet Kaur, who rose to the top of the game from a village in Punjab and persevered. despite all obstacles.

We wanted to know what it all looked like for other young Indian girls with dreams.

So we traveled to the village of Dharoki, in Ms. Kaur’s home province, where we met a cheerful group of young girls training under the mentorship of a police officer who had carved out a corner of his family land into training fields. Among them were Naina, 13, and her older sister Sunaina, 14.

The Women’s Premier League has just started its second season much fanfarebut then, in the spring, it was still new when we saw the girls running their two-mile warm-up loop through the village, going through their exercises with lots of giggling and then disappearing into the dusk on their bikes.

It wasn’t until one evening we climbed the rickety stairs to the one-room house where this photo was taken – the girls’ parents both work as sweepers – that we fully understood how much the new cricket league could mean.

In India, any promise of upward mobility is hampered by the country’s struggle to generate enough jobs. For women, that challenge is compounded by the common perception that their place is in the home.

Now cricket may offer a different path for some. It is extremely popular in India and is played or watched in almost every household.

“The high nationalism of sport grants women a certain freedom to project themselves in the world in a way that does almost nothing,” Sohini Chattopadhyay writes in an article. new book about the women athletes in India.

Naina, Sunaina and their teammates are still working on their skills and still cycling through the mustard fields to their practice field. Last year the sisters were selected to play at a higher level, in competitions in other districts.

They came back with some advice: the girls had to say something so they could be heard across the cricket field. There may also be a life lesson in that, but for the time being it is clear that they have taken the advice to heart in the field.

During a recent visit to Dharoki, we saw them once again running laps, teasing their mentor and joking with each other. They finished with another strength exercise, taking turns climbing the rope hanging from a peepal tree.

There was a great deal of trust around them.

And loud they were indeed.

Photo by Atul Loke, written by Mujib Mashal