Women’s cricket in India: From no governing body to WCAI and the BCCI era

Harmanpreet Kaur’s World Cup-winning catch is now a watershed moment in the history of women’s cricket in the country. The Women’s Cricket World Cup trophy, which had evaded India for so long, is finally in the grasp of the Women In Blue. The road to glory, though, was filled with hardships.

In a country where even in 2025, sports are not seen as a viable career option, one can only imagine how hard it was to think of playing cricket as a woman five decades ago, when the story of women’s cricket in India really started. 

Women were playing cricket in the 1970s but nothing was really organised till a certain Mahendra Kumar Sharma was determined to make things official. In 1973, Sharma registered the Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI) under the Societies Act under the Presidentship of Begum Hamida Habibullah