Twelfth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

The paper interrogates the rules and conditions of play that structure women’s participation in the organized sport of cricket through the experiential narratives of women cricketers who play for the state team of Rajasthan located in north-western India. Fieldwork for the study was conducted between September and December in 2018, and my own experiences as a player for the state team between 2007 to 2012 have also been interpreted in light of the findings. The fieldwork focused on the formation of the state team for the BCCI 2018-19 domestic season, which comprised of trials, selection matches and the team’s training camp. With a brief contextualization of the frailty myth, the paper delves into the normative question ‘how should women play cricket?’ as has been instituted by the MCC and ICC through gendered rules based on the frailty myth. Three of the gendered rules – weight of the ball, size of the boundary and duration of play – are juxtaposed with the on-field experiences of women cricketers at play – ‘How Do Women Play Cricket?’- as a provocation/rebuttal of the normative. In negotiating the gendered structure of play, women cricketers have knowingly and unknowingly challenged the “medical mythology” of frailty thereby transgressing the rules that restrict their physicality. However, the gendered rules have also altered the nature of the game significantly and by playing within them, women cricketers have paved the way for an alternative practice of the game that values gender neutral sporting skills such as coordination, strategy-building and technique.