Who all don’t know Smriti Mandhana yet? It seems everyone does for so deafening is the sound in ears and such in-face is the sight of this left-hander who has held the Aussies by the neck in the ongoing first women’s Test Down Under.
Millions today know her by her deeds; many more millions by her looks. Team-mate Harleen Kaur Deol couldn’t stop gushing on twitter (above) : “O Haseena Julfon Vali”…. and unknowns sound smitten with words(below): “Bollywood actresses with all those makeup and fancy dresses can sit down. Queen is here…”
There is a YouTube video which is without photo-shopped images—not that the ones from the grounds are like studios—and it showcases a young girl, full of life and charm, and witty like hell.
So here we have this girl who has beauty, brains and brawn for you don’t hit world’s best in their own backyard, much like a forest fire which tragically engulfs this continent we call Australia from time to time, smashing 22 fours and a six in the highest-ever by anyone on their soil: 127 runs.
And now that we know all of her 294 runs from four Tests have a staggering 210 runs out of boundaries (51 fours, one six), we could safely summarize that rivals have posted fielders on ropes as much as they could yet the girl-batter has the power and placement to leave them useless.
Not that the Aussies, who work out an opponent in the drawing board itself, with a keen dissection of any craft or chink, were unmindful. Even a casual glance on the girl’s one-day figures—296 fours and 28 sixes from 62 games and 2377 runs—are enough for furrows on foreheads. Yet this girl seems to have a 360 degree vision and strokes to go with in her forays to the crease.
Now comes the part which leaves an ache in the heart for this girl is only 25 and has been in international circuit for a decade yet has only 4 Tests to show, three of them this year itself. It’s a reflection on how patriarchal cricket has been, slow to wake up to women’s side, lacking the vision to spare a part of its riches for the fairer gender who yearn for a career, like men do, better still to go with fame and money.
What better to attempt an avenue called sports which demands sweat, fitness and injuries but makes you inspirational like Sanias, Sandhus and Sainas and now Smriti is to millions of girls. These icons would liberate countless girls in India’s interiors, unshackle the orthodoxy of their elders, as Phogat girls have done, producing the number of wrestlers you run out of count. It would bring a vigour to India and turbo-charge its global ambitions.
And the earth is moving. Sachin Tendulkar is terming Smriti an inspiration; Wasim Jaffer is calling her a “Goddess of Offside” and brand endorsements are pouring in. I mean only a dumb hair-product maker would miss out on Smriti with her flowing locks and SunSilk India are surely not the ones. From Hero for bats to Bata for shoes, to ITC Vivel soaps and Alcon’s eyedrops, Smriti’s appeal now attracts even financial circuit such as Equitas Bank.
This is a moment where you the readers could make your choice: You could either gush at the frontiers girls like Smriti are breaking in women’s cricket; or rue that their financial remuneration are nowhere near to what their men’s counterpart get. For tens of crores which a Virat Kohli commands, Smriti’s returns runs in some lakhs. She has played at the international level as long as Kohli has, give or take a couple of years, yet to his 96 Tests, she has a mere 4; and given their career-averages are in the 50s, and they are such a forceful presence in all formats of the game, you wish the world was more an even field between the two genders.
But Smriti is practical enough to know it isn’t feasible. Women’s cricket doesn’t have the scale of fans and sports channels are not falling over each other to bag its rights. Without the fan base, money and fame would always walk a narrower path.
“We need to understand that the revenue which we get is through men’s cricket. The day women’s cricket starts getting revenue, I will be the first person to say that we need the same thing. But right now, we can’t say that” she had mused to reporters not long ago.
That should make you go a little light on the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) which does offer central contracts to both men and women cricketers, never mind the two scales of Rs 7 crores vs Rs 50 lakhs appear at the two ends of the spectrum.
So all Smriti is aiming is to bring fans to the ground. “That is the thing which we are aiming for and if that happens, all other things are going to fall in place,” she said, “And for that, we need to perform.”
And if her latest knock Down Under doesn’t do it, little else would. Put it to her natural instinct or the mindfulness she has for her sport, Smriti had promised she would be as eye-catching in her quest for maiden hundred as she was on the previous evening, a couple of dozen runs away from her landmark.
Next morning she was true to her word, moving into the 90s with as perfect a sumptuous straight drive as you’d see, and twice pulling fours off three deliveries to reach the landmark.
Smriti was lucky that her precocious talent was encouraged at home as both her father and brother have played to district level. She appeared for cricket trials at nine, which is some age out of Barbie dolls, and two years later was in Maharashtra’s Under-19 side. At 15, she was in Indian colours. At 17, she notched up a double century off 138 balls in a one-day match for West Zone—“of a Rahul sir (Dravid) bat who had gifted it to my brother”—which draws memories of a certain Tendulkar who too had begun batting with seniors’ bat and which made his bottom-hand grip such a trademark in world cricket.
So here’s a wish: Let women’s matches be telecast and stadiums be opened up for fans—BCCI should make it mandatory for sports channels as an add-on to IPL rights—and let there be a flood of matches scheduled for them in domestic and International circuit. And let commentators and reporters atone for their neglect, as I am doing now, and pay a bit more attention and space for women’s cricket in this country. For the reverberation would be far beyond a cricket field—it could change the face of India. Some 662 million women in this country are ready to knock down one more men’s bastion—if they haven’t already.
