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Royal Stag Fan
25 May 2026
We talk a lot about cricket in India. We worship the game, dissect it, debate it, and celebrate it like a national festival. But here's a question that doesn't come up nearly enough — who were the women who showed up to play before anyone was watching? Before the packed stadiums. Before the brand deals. Before the world even thought to ask.
The story of women's cricket in India doesn't begin with glamour. It begins with courage. With women who loved a sport that wasn't ready to love them back. These were pioneers in the truest sense. And you can't really understand where women's cricket is today without knowing where it started.
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Here's something that might surprise you — women's cricket is older than you think. The earliest recorded women's cricket match goes all the way back to 1745, in England. That's before India was even thinking about the sport in any organised way.
In India, the journey was slower, shaped by the social realities of the time. The mid-20th century wasn't exactly an era that celebrated women stepping onto a cricket pitch. No training academies existed for them. No scholarships. No career paths. Cricket for women survived almost entirely outside the mainstream, quietly held together by passion and a stubborn refusal to give up.
The Women's Cricket Association of India (WCAI) was established in 1973. For the first time, women's cricket in India had something resembling an institutional backbone. It wasn't perfect, and it wasn't celebrated loudly, but it was a beginning.
India's first women cricketers walked into empty stands, limited resources, and a sport that hadn't quite made room for them yet. And they played. They led. They competed at an international level at a time when simply being there required more conviction than most people can imagine.
Shantha Rangaswamy captained the side when India played their first women's Test in 1976, at a time when the sport had barely acknowledged women existed. Diana Edulji followed, a left-arm spinner who went on to become one of the most decorated players of her era and among the first women cricketers to receive the Arjuna Award.
They took the field, claimed their space, and forced the sport to make room for them. That presence, quiet, determined, unshakeable, changed everything that came after.
No professional contracts existed. No dedicated cricket academies for women. Families pushed back, seeing no future in it. Travel for matches came out of their own pockets. Recognition from the BCCI stayed minimal for years. The media coverage? Almost non-existent.
Women who played cricket at this time pushed against a current flowing in the opposite direction.
The social stereotypes ran deep too. Cricket carried a "men only" tag — not because women lacked the ability, but because that story had been told long enough that people started believing it. These early players pushed back against decades of that narrative, one match at a time.
Trailblazers rarely see the full impact of what they've set in motion. But the generations that follow do.
The women who came after grew up in a world where Indian women had already proven they could compete at the highest level. Every young girl who picked up a bat, every bowler who ran in with ambition — they carried that lineage forward, building on ground that had already been fought for.
The early pioneers made the idea of Indian women playing cricket professionally feel normal. They opened the door wide enough for the next generation to walk through with their heads held high, dream bigger, push harder, and demand more than they otherwise might have. Every time a young girl watches a boundary being struck and thinks I want to do that — somewhere in that chain of inspiration are the women who played on uneven grounds with almost no support, just because they believed the game was worth it.
The transformation of women's cricket in India was built slowly, steadily. Then things began picking up in the 2010s.
Media coverage expanded. Broadcasting deals came in. The Indian women's team's near-miss at the 2017 ICC Women's World Cup — a nail-biter of a final lost to England — cracked something open in public consciousness. Millions of Indians who had never watched women's cricket suddenly found themselves glued to their screens, asking questions, learning names.
Sponsorships followed. Visibility grew. The Women's Premier League brought the professional infrastructure that had been missing for decades. Players could finally think about cricket as a career — not just a calling.
The sport had finally caught up to the players.
Today's Indian women's cricket team plays with a fluency, intensity and self-belief that makes the game look like it was always theirs to own. And in many ways, it was.
This generation owns their space on the field. They celebrate loudly, speak their minds, build personal brands, and inspire far beyond the boundary rope. They play large, live large, and carry the energy of every woman who came before them — the ones who fought for a seat at the table so that this generation could own the whole room.
Representation in sport carries real weight. Young girls across India — in metros and in small towns, in cricket-crazy families and in homes where the sport has never been discussed — watch these athletes and see themselves reflected.
That reflection says something simple and powerful: this space is for you too.
But that reflection only exists because someone, decades ago, stepped into a space that wasn't built for them and refused to leave. India's first women cricketers didn't just play a sport — they made a cultural argument. With every innings and every over, they staked their claim that women belong in this game.
Recognising them isn't nostalgia. It's context. It's how we understand the full story of Indian cricket — not just the half that got all the coverage.
India's first women cricketers didn't chase fame. They chased the love of a game in a world that kept putting obstacles between them and it. They played through indifference, through lack of resources, through a culture that told them this wasn't their territory. And because they played anyway, everything changed.
Today, Indian women's cricket stands at one of the most exciting junctures in its history. The ICC Women's World Cup 2026 arrives at a moment when women's cricket has never felt more alive. Royal Stag Packaged Drinking Water walks alongside that energy — as an ICC partner committed to the game and everyone who plays it.
Celebrating the pioneers. Backing the future. Royal Stag Packaged Drinking Water — Official ICC Partner. This is what it means to #LargeHumaaraHai. Not just the victories. The whole journey. Every woman who played before the world was ready to watch. Every girl watching now believes she belongs on that field.
The game was always on. It just took a few extraordinary women to prove it.
Celebrating the pioneers. Backing the future. Royal Stag Packaged Drinking Water — Official ICC Partner
