My guess is this is all news for you. If this was a men’s World Cup – especially a men’s World Cup hosted in Southasia – the Subcontinent would be awash in coverage of it. Even if you want nothing to do with cricket, there’s no way you wouldn’t know about it. But with the women’s game things are different. But I’m not here to repeat that familiar lament of how women’s sports doesn’t get anywhere near the coverage it deserves. I’m here to tell you that we are giving it the coverage it deserves – and doing it in that Southasian way that only Himal can.
Long before the tournament started, we reached out to writers in India and Sri Lanka, the two co-hosts. We worked with Tanushree Bhasin to tell the story of how a World Cup win for India now has the potential to finally put women’s cricket at the centre of the country’s sporting culture, alongside the men’s game, and give girls the same freedom to play cricket on the streets that Indian boys have long taken for granted. And we worked with Estelle Vasudevan to tell the story of her journey as one of Sri Lanka’s few women sports journalists, which has proceeded in parallel with the difficult journey of women’s cricket in Sri Lanka. Estelle wrote her Himal piece even as she covered World Cup matches live as a commentator.
