Encouraging our women in green

Letter July 06, 2017
Our team had no sponsors because capital entities are only interested in putting their money where they get revenues

ISLAMABAD: When Pakistanis were rejoicing the ICC men’s Champion’s Trophy win even weeks after the final match, the country’s women’s cricket team was competing in the ICC Women’s World Cup. But as usual there was little attention given to them.

Unlike the men’s matches, there were no dedicated airtimes or talk shows commenting on the World Cup on our televisions screens. The viewers preferred watching the infamous game shows over watching the women in green bat on the pitch.

Had they been watching, they would have noticed that the bats the women batted with had no logos and the advertisements during breaks were minimal. Our team had no sponsors because profit-driven capital entities are only interested in putting their money in things that would give them revenues, which are decided by people’s demand, and clearly Pakistanis only ‘bleed green’ when the men play.

After the win of our men’s cricket team, we were quick to say that our men were ‘courageous and won against all odds’. But in true sense of these words, it’s our women that are brave enough to have made it to the team despite facing pressure and disapproval of their professional careers at some point in time.

We criticise the poor structure of our domestic cricket and praise our men for honing their skills by playing ‘gali cricket’. But have we ever considered that our women don’t even have that privilege? In fact, considering our obsession of winning against our archrival India, it’s unfortunate to know that our women’s cricket team isn’t even given importance when they are playing against the team in blue.

While criticism (read: constructive criticism) is healthy, we also need to step besides that. We need to proactively make efforts to improve the state of our women’s cricket team at the grassroots level. And we can’t put this entire burden on the authorities concerned. We need to start giving women the space to play and encourage them for doing so.

To begin with we should support our women’s cricket team even if they lost recent matches, because they are true winners for breaking society constructed glass ceilings.

Shahab Warsi

Published in The Express Tribune, July 6th, 2017.

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