Shobha Pandit: ‘If we wanted to play, we had to get it done ourselves… from putting up nets to even rolling the pitch’

That World Cup in India saw just four teams competing, with debutants India being joined by Australia, New Zealand and England. While India ended the tournament winless, there were thousands of people who turned up to the grounds to watch the match. Pandit remembers the Calcutta crowd at Eden Gardens as being very knowledgeable, while spectators at some of the other venues like Patna were largely curious to see girls playing and were drawn to the grounds because the visiting Australian and New Zealand teams would play in skirts (the Indians and teams like West Indies played in trousers).

As the opening batter of the Indian team from 1975 to 1981 Pandit, who played nine Tests and three ODIs for India in the 1970s (she actually played 17, out of which the rest were later termed unofficial), was part of a team, whose roles were not just restricted to playing.

Shobha Pandit was part of the Indian women’s team in the 1970s

“When tournaments were organised, we would also help with arrangements. We once had a 15-day national team camp near Shimla in 1976 just before we left for a tour of New Zealand and Australia, where we had to carry a mat to play on and roll it before the practise session and then carry it back in. We had to put up nets before we trained. On other occasions, we have even rolled the pitch itself besides doing other things. If you want to play, you had to get it done yourself,” says Pandit, who has written her autobiography ‘Beyond Boundaries’.

Like this one time, when the match was supposed to be at Kanpur’s Green Park, but shifted to a vacant ground right next to an air force air base at the last minute due to some issue.

“For a woman to play cricket back then was difficult and it only happened if at least one member of the family backed you. In my case, it was my father. Barely anyone got a job even if they played for the national team. Diana had a Railways job and Shantha Rangaswamy had a Canara Bank job. But besides that, no one had a job. Women’s players had to fend for ourselves at every turn. But we were a happy lot. Even if that meant buying your own tickets and kit,” says the 67-year-old.

One of her earliest memories of playing for the national team is being told to open the innings by team manager Lala Amarnath against the West Indies in 1976 and bursting into tears because she owned just one bat, which had cracked during the practice session.

“Seeing my tears, Lalaji rounded up the team and told them my predicament. Soon, 10 bats were pushed in front of me. I picked one up, and it turned out to be a Gray-Nicolls that was Diana (Edulji’s). Even when I walked out, I was still tearing up because it was an honour to play with a Gray-Nicolls.”

With the Women’s Premier League promising to bring into the system everything that the first pioneers of Indian women’s cricket lacked, Pandit is glad to see the progress the women’s game has made. “Rome was not built in a day,” she says.