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Indian Girls’s World Cup Successful Group: A Mosaic of Unity in Variety

T. Navin

Indian ladies’s cricket staff gained the World Cup 2025. The Indian staff’s triumph within the World Cup at a packed Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai was way over a sporting victory — it was a celebration of India’s plural soul. From struggling to qualify for the semi-finals to scripting a outstanding run chase within the semi-final and lifting the trophy, the journey captured the creativeness of the nation. In a rustic the place males’s cricket has lengthy dominated public consideration and girls athletes have typically remained unnoticed; this victory is a turning level — an affirmation of girls’s excellence and resilience on the worldwide stage.

But past the glory of the win lies a deeper, extra profound story. The world champions personified the spirit of unity in range, reflecting the very essence of India. Every participant got here from a definite area, language, and cultural custom, but collectively they shaped one inseparable tricolour — a portrait of India’s dwelling pluralism.

Harmanpreet Kaur and Harleen Deol introduced the vibrancy of Punjab, embodying the Sikh sporting custom. Shafali Verma from Rohtak, Haryana, represented the fearlessness and uncooked willpower of the state’s sporting tradition. Smriti Mandhana, born in Mumbai and raised in Sangli, Maharashtra, hailed from a Marwari Hindu household that made the Marathi-speaking area its house — a mix of regional and cultural integration. Deepti Sharma from Agra and Sneh Rana from Dehradun mirrored the perseverance of India’s Hindi heartland, whereas Jemimah Rodrigues, a Mangalorean Christian from Bandra, stood for the coastal range of the Konkani-speaking west coast. Renuka Singh from the hill village of Parsa in Himachal Pradesh introduced the serenity and power of the Himalayas, whereas Richa Ghosh of Siliguri and Uma Chetry from Assam carried the rhythm and aspirations of the East and Northeast. Arundhati Reddy from Hyderabad and N. Shree Charani Reddy from Kadapa represented the Telugu-speaking South, whereas Radha Yadav — born in Mumbai to a household from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh — bridged India’s North and West. Kranti Goud from Madhya Pradesh added the Central Indian heartbeat to this extraordinary mosaic.

Collectively, they stood not simply as a staff, however as a dwelling image of India’s federal and cultural range.

Plurality as Energy, Not Risk

At a time when the spirit of plurality is more and more seen as a risk to unity — when uniformity is projected as the one path to nationwide cohesion — the Indian ladies’s staff has supplied a strong counter-narrative. The push for “one nation, one language,” the portrayal of Hindi–Hindu–Hindustan as the only real definition of identification, and makes an attempt to suppress linguistic, spiritual, and cultural variations reveal a deep-seated concern of range. The staff’s victory, nonetheless, demonstrates that true power lies within the coexistence of variations, not their erasure.

Variety Brings Complementary Strengths

Every participant’s background contributed distinctive strengths to the collective. The self-discipline and drive of the Punjabi gamers, the calm precision of these from the South and the hills, the creativity and aptitude of Bengal, and the resilience of the Hindi heartland collectively created a staff balanced in ability, temperament, and mindset. What one lacked, one other complemented — turning range into synergy. Fairly than fragmenting the staff, their various upbringings made them extra adaptive and resilient beneath stress.

Plurality Enhances Empathy and Mutual Respect

When gamers from totally different religions, languages, and areas share the identical dressing room, empathy and understanding naturally emerge. Their unity was not born of sameness, however of mutual respect. When Jemimah Rodrigues from Mumbai’s Christian neighborhood cheered on Shafali Verma from Haryana, or when Harmanpreet Kaur led a huddle uniting voices in Marathi, Telugu, Bengali, and Hindi, they demonstrated that range, when embraced, deepens solidarity.

Shared Targets Transcend Boundaries

Regardless of their various roots, each participant was sure by one dream — to carry the World Cup house. On the sector, there was no north or south, no Hindu or Christian — solely India. Their collective aspiration blurred all markers of identification. Plurality grew to become a unifying drive as a result of it was anchored in a shared nationwide goal.

Illustration Builds Belonging and Pleasure

The staff’s composition — spanning Punjab, Bengal, Assam, Himachal, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Madhya Pradesh — gave hundreds of thousands of ladies throughout India a mirror by which to see themselves. Every area might declare part of the victory. Plural illustration made the achievement not the triumph of 1 area or faith, however the shared pleasure of a complete nation. Nationwide delight grew to become inclusive, not possessive.

Plurality Drives Innovation and Resilience

Publicity to a number of languages, types of play, and regional cricketing cultures enriched the staff’s strategic pondering. Their capability to debate ways throughout linguistic and cultural traces constructed flexibility and innovation. This cross-pollination of concepts — from batting approaches to area placements — fostered psychological adaptability, a key trait that helped them bounce again from close to elimination to turn out to be world champions.

A Dwelling Portrait of India’s Pluralism

The Indian Girls’s World Cup–profitable staff is a microcosm of India itself — a land the place distinction shouldn’t be division, however dialogue; the place unity arises not from uniformity, however from shared dedication amidst range. Their victory is a reminder that pluralism shouldn’t be a weak spot to be feared, however a supply of inventive power to be celebrated.

In a time when the thought of India’s plurality is beneath pressure, these ladies have reaffirmed a timeless fact — that the truest type of unity is one which embraces, not erases, range. Jemimah Rodrigues, who was as soon as trolled on social media for brazenly expressing her Christian religion, by way of her fearless batting beneath stress carried India into the semi-finals — a strong reminder that power of character and dedication to the nation transcend all boundaries of faith or identification. Her story, like that of her teammates, proves that range doesn’t divide India; it defines and strengthens it.

[T. Navin is an independent writer. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based news, views and analysis website, that describes itself as non-partisan and taking “the Side of the People!” It is edited by Binu Mathew.]

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A Cricket Victory with Grace and With out Macho Shows of Hyper-nationalism

Sayandeb Chowdhury

Patriarchy in India is paleolithic in its thickness, towering in its effrontery, and glacial in its tenacity. And within the final decade or so, we’ve solely dug deeper and deeper. However there are days when one thing manages to crack open the ‘time-honoured’ armour patriarchy surrounds itself with. When Ibsen’s A Doll’s Home premiered in Copenhagen in 1879, it was mentioned that the sound of Nora Helmer closing the door behind her on the finish of the play, in a gesture of defiant finality, was heard internationally.

One thing related could have occurred on the second day of November. That Sunday midnight, a triumphant eleven, all ladies, of their shared camaraderie, their straightforward smiles, their candid manner, their carefree resolve and most significantly, their expertise, gained us throughout. However extra importantly, additionally they despatched a message about sporting civility, about being oneself, and about not concocting their win with a shoddy present of macho hyper-nationalism. As is understood, the masque of masculinity fears nothing greater than ladies who’re snug of their skins.

I come to cricket not as a author, historian, or journalist however solely as an keen, if essential, spectator. And like many, my cricket consciousness has an identifiable starting – the night of Wednesday, June 22, 1983. India was enjoying England within the Prudential Cup semi-final. The group at Outdated Trafford was principally white, flying the Union Jack was nonetheless a factor, and gamers wore white shirts with folded sleeves, and Panama hats. Because the night segued into the evening right here in India, there Sandip Patil hit the decisive boundary that sucked the delirious small crowd of Indians into the bottom. Me, simply wanting seven, and my father, glued to the monochrome tv inside our condominium in Bombay, felt a wave of unprecedented ecstasy.

As a nation we had barely identified the sight of trophies, one of many tallest of which glittered within the June English solar, within the palms of Kapil Dev simply days later. India had defeated the mighty West Indies. That week has now attained the mysticism of a lore. However nothing might obscure what we understood later: that after English language, cricket had the promise to turn out to be the brand new web site of postcolonial assertion in that decade, and our rag-tag ‘social-welfare’ nation, decisively, even when clumsily, took up the mantle precisely the place the Caribbeans had left it. For a decade it appeared there was a success of sociologist Ashis Nandy’s well-known quip, “cricket is an Indian sport unintentionally found by the British”.

Why do I bear in mind these days? As a result of final week these days resurfaced unannounced. Certainly I used to be not the not solely who noticed Kapil Dev’s iconic 175 in Jemima Rodrigues’ singlehanded brio towards Australia, an innings what was low on optics and excessive on goal; neither was I the one one who noticed a whiff of Mohinder Amarnath in Deepti Sharma’s all-round play within the last, or noticed Kapil’s run away from the wicket to dismiss Viv Richards in Harmanpreet’s unforgettable climactic catch within the last.

There are additionally different hints of that point right now: nobody gave an opportunity to Indian males in 1983, similar to nobody thought, until effectively into the center of this match that the Indian ladies had an opportunity. So right here was the story of the meek inheriting the earth, yet again, 42 years later. Not less than in cricket.

However there are variations in males’s and girls’s cricket, in tone, if nothing else.

Think about what occurred for a lot of these years in between? By mid-90s, the neoliberal market, smelling infinite revenue, galvanised cricket in direction of ends which barely sat effectively with the thought of the sport. Cricket, to place it briefly, was first ‘carnivalised’, then caramalised, after which weaponised for the providers of jingoism, particularly within the final decade and a half or so. Each cricket match has turn out to be a ruse for overt brouhaha, braggadocio and sabre-rattling, stitched as it’s now with pumped-up notions of nationwide honour and international prominence. Evidently cricket is not any extra a refined, intelligent sport, however a gladiatorial area the place the starvation of million xenophobes should be satiated. In different phrases, males’s cricket, willy-nilly, has turn out to be one other province of bareknuckle masculine chest-thumping.

Final Sunday evening, the ladies went towards this grain and broke the mould, with out even attempting onerous. With out portray their triumph with epic thrives, one can safely say that they touched a chord in many people who had lengthy turned away from watching the sport performed by males.

After years it appeared {that a} bunch of keen sportspersons, with histories of gendered taunts and battle written on them, have come to the pitch within the real spirit of the sport, attended by a way of resolve and comforted by a real show of what the French name jouissance; not as thick-jawed marauders a sport away from their subsequent ‘apparent’ victory. Additionally, gender will be the binding anchor of the lady’s staff, however in its geographic, ethnic and caste range, it is usually intersectional, a mirror of plurality that’s India. To begin with, they will effectively educate Indian males the ‘advantage’ and charm of going again to shaking palms with opponents after a match. Or shaking a leg with no care on the planet. That will be starting. The fences of patriarchy would come subsequent.

However on the similar time, to not specific my deep concern could be to deify the ladies’s staff. My warning comes from years of being fooled by the optics of cricket, and by the so-called vanguards of the sport, all males, each inside and outdoors the enjoying area. Therefore, I’ll maintain my horses concerning the World Cup win being revolutionary, or ushering a brand new period of openness for girls in sports activities. Patriarchy’s arms are, in any case, lengthy, and prejudice on this nation is congenital. That’s at all times been the case.

On this case I’m additionally weary of company funds flooding the sport’s actors a capite advert calcem. This has occurred to essentially the most formidable of skills in males’s cricket. So, before we all know, the ‘celeb cricket superwomen’ shall be managed by expertise brokers, and made to tweet in accordance with the need of the regime in Delhi, sugary with reward for the pricey chief. The assertion of gender, class and caste would all be sucked out in favour of pageantry and spectacle. I’m not naive to anticipate overt revolt, however the possibility shouldn’t be at all times bland, unquestioned conformity both. If that occurs, it could be nothing wanting an epic tragedy.

And but, a grizzled middle-aged cricket cynic like me would nonetheless prefer to hope; and hope that in contrast to the Indian state which oversaw the transformation of Indian males’s cricket, ladies’s cricket, for a change, will assert its basic decency and remodel the Indian nation into a greater model of itself.

[Sayandeb Chowdhury teaches at Krea University, Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]

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Jemimah, You Are the Republic’s Pleasure

Badri Raina

Expensive Jemimah Rodrigues,

That you simply performed essentially the most decisive hand in getting the higher of the mighty Australians is fortunately everywhere in the media, each print and digital.

Your 127 was one of many most interesting knocks many people have seen.

Nor can sufficient be mentioned concerning the high quality of your fielding; merely excellent and galvanizing.

Thousands and thousands of excellent Indians throughout all denominations have seen how you’ve gotten acquired insult from these segments of our populace who’ve taken upon themselves to outline our realities for us with out being requested to take action, and with out the least authority within the matter, social, spiritual, or constitutional.

Most hearteningly, you’ve gotten additionally acquired the accolades you so richly deserve from different Indians who stay unaffected by the political poison that we’ve been subjected to in recent times.

We perceive you might be as a consequence of be invited to tea by the honourable prime minister who by no means fails to encourage those that succeed. It’s our hope that in that assembly he’ll underscore to you the true face and depth of Sanatan by citing from the Rig Veda the hymn, “Ekam Sat, Viprah Bahudha Vadanti,” that means, “The reality is one, the clever name it by many names.”

Your identify for that Reality is Jesus, and we are able to make certain that Shri Narendra Modi will reassure you that you’ve each proper as an Indian to name the one Reality by that identify.

We additionally hope that measures required beneath the rule of regulation shall be initiated to hunt accountability from those that have sought to ridicule and abuse that proper after your touching invocation of Jesus.

Expensive Jemimah, essentially the most great factor at all times is to have your friends and compatriots lovingly in your aspect, each within the dressing room and outdoors.

We all know that Captain Harmanpreet Kaur and her staff put on you within the coronary heart of their coronary heart, in order that the abuse and vulgarity so many now endure by the hands of the misguided could be disregarded as mud that usually gathers after we are engaged in some heavy lifting on behalf of any rightful trigger.

The nation loves you and is thrilled by your exploits.

We demand that you just go on from power to power in full religion within the beliefs of the Republic.

[Badri Raina taught English at Delhi University. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]