Meet the man on a mission to level the playing field for women’s cricket

Meet the man on a mission to level the playing field for women’s cricket

Vishal Yadav started Female Cricket in 2016 as a platform to feature diverse content on women’s cricket. Six years later, it hosts talent hunt events and runs a cricket academy for girls.

In an interview with HerStory last year, Jemimah Rodrigues, star of the Indian women’s cricket team, said, “Growing up as a girl playing cricket was not easy. I used to be the only girl playing cricket on the ground where there were around 400 boys. Also, there were people who came home and told my parents, pata nahin yeh kya cricket khelegi, kucch aur khelne do (how will she play cricket, let her take up any other sport).”

Jemimah, who went on to grab her spot in the women’s cricket team, said the scenario is much better than when she first started playing cricket in 2017.

But one must admit that in a country where the men’s version of the sport is akin to a religion, women are working hard to level the playing field. And others are now lending a helping hand.

In 2016, Vishal Yadav started Female Cricket, to attract more girls into cricket and tackle the gender disparity in the sport. Starting out as a platform featuring reports, stories, and news, and building a community of women cricket fans and players, Female Cricket took off on the outstanding performance of the girls in the Women’s World Cup in 2017.

With enquiries about women’s cricket flooding in, Vishal decided to open a dedicated cricket academy for women in Mumbai with sessions exclusively for girls.

In early 2020, the pandemic struck and like every other sport, women’s cricket too, took a backseat. Female Cricket continued creating content through its social media platforms to ride through the period.

“However, if you recall, men’s cricket did not come to a standstill. The IPL was held outside the country, but women’s cricket got sidelined,” Vishal says.

A ‘content’ beginning

Female Cricket had to innovate during this period to create diverse content to retain its audience.

“We started different series’ of content starting with The Pioneers…we brought in all former cricketers like , Mamatha Maben, Kalpana Venkatachar, Pramila Bhat, and others from the early Indian women’s teams. Their stories were still unknown and we wanted to share their experiences and show our viewers why the history behind Indian women’s cricket needs to be recognised and celebrated,” Vishal says.

The platform launched a digital show Cricket with Queens, which was shot just before the pandemic hit and featured the new generation of cricketers like Jemimah Rodrigues, Mona Meshram, Ekta Bisht, and others.

Women’s cricket has gained more recognition since Vishal started Female Cricket in 2016. In October 2022, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) made a landmark announcement that the match fee for both men and women cricketers (contracted) will be equal.

Vishal is happy things are changing for the better.

“Women have a lot of matches to play at the national and domestic level. This year, the BCCI announced matches for the under-15 age group. There is more visibility than the girls had in 2015,” he says.

Vishal’s motivation to start Female Cricket was that women cricketers were not as well-known as their male counterparts. Coverage has since then increased across all forms of media and make these women cricketers household names.

“In 2015, we used to reach out to the players asking them if they would like to share their story. Now they reach out to us,” he says.

The shift in the popularity of the game has also led to a change in parents’ mindsets about their girls playing cricket.

Vishal believes the Women’s World Cup in 2017 and India’s performance in the tournament changed the face of the game. He was inundated with queries from girls and parents, with one main question: “How do I/my daughter start playing cricket?” He had only partial visibility about the national cricketing setup then and spoke to a few cricketers, who advised him that the best way was for the girls to hone their skills at a club or an academy.

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It’s 2018 and we still see gender disparity in sports, says the man behind Female Cricket

Taking the game to Tier II and III cities

With the lack of a dedicated cricket academy for girls that would involve girls in all aspects of the game, Vishal decided to start a cricket academy in Mumbai in 2017.

Before the start of the pandemic, they were able to coach around 250 girls in Mumbai. And once COVID started abating, requests started pouring in from Tier II and Tier III cities as well.

He admits there are no well-known names from the batches, yet.

“These girls are beginners who are taking up the bat and facing a seasoned leather ball for the first time. Starting at a basic level, one has to put in at least five to six years to get into a district, state, and then the national team. We haven’t spent as much time with the girls, but do have some prospects that will eventually go up the ranks.”

Vishal reiterates that Mumbai is a very competitive landscape and the composition of the state team hardly changes, because the girls are picked up very early, at 13 or 14 years, and so keep playing every year. Their focus will now be on Tier II and III cities, expanding from Mumbai. The academy charges Rs 3,000 per month from each girl who is taught by local coaches with a good track record. It has trained 400 girls so far.

Not just restricted to content and coaching, Female Cricket conducted the first-ever talent hunt for female cricketers, and also partnered with ABP News to conduct talent hunt trials in Lucknow, Delhi and Bengaluru. The second event saw 700 girls participate in the campaign.

“Way before the pandemic hit, we knew that women’s IPL was soon going to be a reality. And, scouts and talent managers would be looking for talented people. So we decided to do an initial talent hunt to understand whether we had enough bench strength. In the second event, we were the talent partners and former cricketers like Kapil Dev, Atul Wassan, Jaya Sharma, Sunita Sharma were part of the selection panel,” Vishal says.

The girls selected in the event received first-hand advice from former cricketers like Kapil Dev and Atul Wassan; those from underprivileged backgrounds received sponsorship.

Female Cricket earns revenues from two sources – via digital content (through partnerships with brands) and the academy. It touched total revenue of Rs 50 lakh in 2022, which Vishal attributes to first-mover advantage, commitment towards building an exclusive community, and a boost in coverage of women’s cricket. Bootstrapped for six years, the platform raised its pre-seed funding round recently (for an undisclosed amount).

The website now sees a monthly viewership of over 200,000 which was hardly 10-20K back in 2018. Female Cricket gets invited to cover women's cricket events exclusively - it covered a tournament called FairBreak Dubai and the Women's Asia Cup in Bangladesh last year.

Vishal admits it’s challenging to sustain talent in women’s cricket.

“As a society, we haven’t evolved much. In metros, we have open-minded parents but in smaller towns, it’s still a challenge. People believe once they enrol their girls in an academy, they will get into state and Indian teams immediately. After a season or two, the parents want the girls to discontinue because they believe they will not have a career in cricket. This mindset has to change,” Vishal says.

(The story has been updated to change the year of Female Cricket's inception, increase in revenue and to include additional names of mentors.)