The splashy debut got an enthusiastic reception among fans, even if it paled in comparison to the ferocious following for the men. Some of the matches drew as many as 35,000 people. Fifty million viewers in India tuned in during the league’s first week. Social media was filled with chatter and memes about the players.
“Everyone is a stakeholder now in making it successful,” said Nikhil Bardia, an executive at RISE Worldwide, a sports and entertainment agency, “in empowering the women ecosystem to have a lot more heroes.”
Inspiration
When the girls and their families in the village of Dharoki in Punjab turn on the TV these days, when they open Instagram or spread out a newspaper, they see it: roaring female cricket players, displaying the kind of joy and swagger long confined to men.
A majority of the players who have made it — running and diving on India’s cricket fields one day, appearing in ads for luxury cars, jewelry and sunscreen the next — come from villages and small towns. The girls in Punjab know this well because one of the most famous of them, Harmanpreet Kaur, is a local legend from their home state.
Last month, as the women’s league kicked off in Mumbai, Ms. Kaur, 34, walked out to fireworks in the buzzing stadium, flanked by the captains of the other four teams. For years, she has been the captain of India’s national team.
She embodies this moment’s transformative potential for women’s sports.
Ms. Kaur has risen to the heights of cricket only because a coach identified her talent in high school and let her practice with the boys — there were no girls’ teams in her area. Eventually, she said in an interview, he built a girls’ team around her.
Even after she had become a fixture on the women’s national team, she had to keep looking for side jobs. She found part-time work far away from home, at Indian Railways in Mumbai. The contrast was deflating: representing India on the global stage, then returning to a junior clerk job, carrying documents between offices at a crowded train station.
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