By Ekantika Iyer
Did you know?
The first Indian cricket club was established by the Parsi community in Bombay, in 1848 and the club played their first match against the Europeans in 1877. The first official Indian cricket team was formed in 1911 and they toured to England, where they played English county teams.
Women’s Cricket in India
The women’s cricket arrived in India much later than the men’s cricket. It was in the year 1973 when the Women’s Cricket Association of India was formed. The first match they played as a team was against West Indies in 1976. Indian Women’s team recorded its first test-win against West Indies under Shantha Rangaswamy’s captaincy in the year 1978. Since then, they have been playing Home games and Away games in all formats: T20, ODI and Test matches. However, there has been a very less coverage as compared to men’s cricket.
We have seen them perform extremely well in the World Cup games, T20I and so on. With minimal opportunities as compared to Men’s Cricket, they have stood their ground and played some good cricket. With their performances getting the coverage now, we have had the opportunity to watch them play live and the support has just kept on increasing. We really appreciate how people have supported them in the last few years. With more people supporting them, we will see them shine bright.
JIO Women’s T20 Challenge 2020
We already see them giving their best in the 3rd edition of Women’s T20 Challenge. The 1st Jio Women’s T20 Challenge was held at Sharjah between Supernovas (led by Harmanpreeet Kaur) and Velocity (led by Mithali Raj) . Velocity won the toss and elected to bowl.
In the first half of the match, Supernovas’ batting unit started off with a good start. After the fall of wicket of Priya Punia (11 runs in 15 balls) by Leigh Kasperek (4-23-2) we could see other players trying to stay at the crease but were not able to. Chamari Athapaththu scored 44 runs in 39 balls; Harmanpreet Kaur scored 31 runs in 27 balls. The skipper was hoping that would be setting a competitive score for Velocity. Velocity bowlers Ekta Bisht (4-22-3); Jahanara Alam (4-27-2); Shikha Pandey (4-18-0); Sune Luus (1-11-0) bowled really well. Eventually Supernovas set a target of 127 runs in 120 balls for the team Velocity. With team Velocity successfully restricting the team Supernovas at 126, we saw some excellent bowling in the game.
In the 2nd half of the match, team Velocity lost its first wicket within the 1st over. Daniele Wyatt got out scoring 0 runs in 5 balls, this created tension among the players. Veda Krishnamurthy scored 29 runs in 28 balls; Sushma Verma scored 34 runs in 33 balls and Sune Luus scored 37 runs in 21 balls. Supernovas’ bowlers too bowled really well with Ayabonga Khaka (4-27-2); Radha Yadav (4-25-1); Poonam Yadav (4-27-1); Shashikala Siriwardene (3.5-30-1) and Shakera Selman (4-19-0) bowling their best bowls.
In the post match interview, Velocity’s skipper Mitali Raj mentioned it was a close win for the team. In the post match interview, we also heard Supernovas’ skipper Harmanpreet Kaur had mentioned that they fell short of 20-30 runs. The players were unable to sustain themselves on the crease. The game was indeed competitive and a close one.
In our everyday life, we come across most people complaining about their job satisfaction. They hope for a successful career in their lives, but they forget about their passion. In other instances, when our loved ones discuss about their career prospects we tend to say, “follow your passion”, “follow what you always wanted to be” etc. When people tend to follow their desired dreams, they go out of the way to achieve it, and at times everything is at stake. As humans, we tend to opt for safer route to avoid risks and challenges. Hence, we settle for the safer secured jobs and expect that things will get better but the job satisfaction level and motivation is lower which leads to feeling like everyday is a task. When it comes to thriving for your goal, it is not only motivation, grit, commitment etc that plays an important role. Along with these aspects, one exclusive factor which plays a vital role is passion. If a person is passionate about something, they will give their 100% or even more in order to achieve it.
When we talk about passion and dreams, we need to understand that passion doesn’t know the difference between genders. Every individual has an onus to achieve whatever they want to and be at the best position in their life. When you’re passionate about your work everything becomes easy. You tend to experience excitement for your work, new set of challenges you come across will seem interesting and a source of learning something in life and so on. When there is passion about something, motivation to do it everyday is high and constant. You may have low days and days when you don’t feel like doing anything, not even if you love doing it and that is normal as our minds need some days off. It is only a matter of concern when it goes on for a long time.
In these situations, work-life balance comes into picture, because, since you are passionate about your work, work seems easy and smooth rather than a task or an obligation, and you are able to balance your professional and personal lives with ease. When you’re passionate about something it becomes a priority on its own. The more you follow something for which your are passionate, the more those dreams become real. In other words, it begins to manifest in your life.
Women’s cricket has been a good example along with all other women sports teams when it comes to passion. We can see how these teams have been inspiring every other woman out there. We hope that with such amazing performances and the support from the audience, they get more opportunities and inspire a lot more people to follow their passion despite the societal pressures and manifest their life themselves.