Long Before Mithali Raj or Harmanpreet Kaur, There Was Mahendra Kumar Sharma — The Man Who Sold His Property So Diana Edulji, Shanta Rangaswamy, An...

It was a golden evening at the Commonwealth Games 2022. India’s women’s cricket team had set a competitive target of 165 against England in the semi-finals. The tension was thick in the air. England needed

14 runs off the final over, and Sneh Rana stood at the crease, eyes locked on the batter. One wicket down, a flurry of dot balls, and India sealed the game by four runs — marking a historic silver medal win for the women in blue. It was a proud moment, decades in the making. But few people know that the seeds of that triumph were sown long ago by a man whose name is rarely mentioned in the same breath as the players he helped empower — Mahendra Kumar Sharma. While India cheered its modern heroines, the story of this man — who dared to dream of girls playing cricket in the dusty fields of Lucknow when it was still a man’s game — remained largely untold. His determination, resourcefulness, and sheer belief made it possible for women in India to step up to the crease.

The Spark That Lit a Revolution

In the early 1970s, cricket for women in India was almost unimaginable. The sport was seen as “too rough” or “too unladylike,” while in England, Australia, and New Zealand, women were already wielding the bat with pride. But Mahendra Kumar Sharma, a young sports enthusiast from Lucknow, had other ideas.

At the time, Sharma was busy organising softball and handball tournaments for school and college girls. One fine day, during a softball match in Hyderabad in 1973, something remarkable happened — the girls picked up cricket bats and started playing their version of the game after watching boys do it nearby. Instead of stopping them, Sharma watched with curiosity. What he saw wasn’t just a game; it was a movement waiting to happen. As sports journalist Suprita Das recounts in her book “Free Hit: The Story of Women's Cricket in India,” that was the very moment Sharma began to visualise a future for women’s cricket in India. He decided to “test the waters,” and what began as a small experiment would soon blossom into a nationwide sporting revolution.

A Rickshaw, a Microphone, and a Dream

Before Sharma, there was only one women’s cricket club in the entire country — the Albees Cricket Club in Bombay, founded by Aloo Bamjee and her husband. But Sharma wasn’t one to wait for change to come from the big cities. He took to the streets of Lucknow, riding around in a rickshaw with a loudspeaker, shouting, “Kanyaon ki cricket hogi, zaroor aaiye!” (“Girls’ cricket will happen, do come!”). And they did. In what is believed to be one of the first women’s cricket matches in India, around 200 people turned up at the Queen’s Anglo Sanskrit College to watch the game. For Sharma, it was proof that people were willing to watch women play cricket — if only someone gave them the platform. That same year, he went on to form the Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI). Registered in Lucknow under the Societies Act in 1973, with Begum Hamida Habibullah as the President, the WCAI marked the official beginning of organised women’s cricket in the country. Sharma became its first Secretary — and the man behind every letter, request, and initiative that followed.

From Lucknow to London: Taking Indian Women’s Cricket to the World

Sharma’s ambition didn’t stop at forming a local body. He wanted Indian women to play internationally. So, he reached out to the English Women’s Cricket Association (EWCA) and secured India’s membership in the International Women’s Cricket Council (IWCC) that very year. “He saw that to take women’s cricket to the next level, we had to play internationally,” said Shubhangi Kulkarni, one of India’s first cricketers, in an interview with The Mint. “His vision was very clear — he wanted players to be noticed, and he made sure they got the publicity they deserved.” In April 1973, Sharma organised the first-ever women’s interstate tournament in Pune, featuring teams from Bombay, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. The Bombay team was captained by none other than Diana Edulji, who would later go on to become one of India’s greatest cricketers and a Padma Shri awardee. Within a year, the tournament grew in size and popularity — eight teams in Varanasi, twelve in Calcutta. Sharma had sparked a movement that was now unstoppable.

The Man Who Sold His Property for the Game

Such was Sharma’s dedication that he even sold his property in Lucknow to fund women’s cricket. According to The Hindu, he organised fundraisers and celebrity matches — including one in Pune in 1975 where Bollywood star Vinod Khanna made an appearance. And when the players were invited to meet Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Sharma ensured it was a moment they would never forget — arranging their first-ever plane ride to Delhi. “He organised everything with heart,” said Shubhangi Kulkarni to The Hindu. “But for Sharma, women’s cricket would not have taken off the way it did in India.”

The First Test Matches and Beyond

In February 1975, the Australian under-25 women’s team toured India — marking the first international matches for Indian women. The legendary Lala Amarnath, India’s first Test captain, coached the team and selected Ujjwala Nikam, Sudha Shah, and Sreerupa Bose as captains for the three Tests. India drew all three matches — a remarkable achievement for a team that had barely taken shape two years prior. By 1976, India’s senior women’s team faced off against the West Indies in a six-match series that ended in a draw. It was during this series that Shanta Rangaswamy scored 76 runs in front of an electrified home crowd at the Chinnaswamy Stadium — a moment that symbolised the arrival of Indian women’s cricket on the global stage. Finally, in 1978, India hosted and played its first-ever Women’s World Cup, with the “Women in Blue” etching their names into history.

Forgotten, But Never Erased

Despite the milestones, medals, and rising fame of Indian women cricketers, Mahendra Kumar Sharma remains largely forgotten — a name buried under decades of cricketing headlines that seldom make space for the architect behind it all. “He made cricketers like Diana Edulji, Shanta Rangaswamy, and Sudha Shah known to the public,” recalled Kulkarni. “He is just happy to see that women’s cricket has become so big.” It’s poetic, really — that the man who once shouted from a rickshaw to announce the arrival of women’s cricket in India now watches from the sidelines, content that his dream has finally come true.

Fun Fact

Did you know that India’s women cricketers played their first-ever international game before India’s men won their first World Cup? The women debuted in 1975, while the men’s historic World Cup victory came nine years later, in 1983. Every boundary the Indian women hit today, every victory they celebrate, and every medal they lift — carries a silent echo of Mahendra Kumar Sharma’s belief. His story is not one of fame or fortune but of vision, grit, and love for the game. As the crowd roars for the next generation of women cricketers, one can almost hear a distant voice from Lucknow saying, “Kanyaon ki cricket hogi, zaroor aaiye.” And indeed, it did.