All-rounder Minnu Mani belongs to the Kurichiya tribe in Wayanad, Kerala, famous for being skilful with the bow and arrow. Minnu too has a dead eye but she is making her mark not in archery but cricket. On Monday, the 23-year-old from Choyimoola in Mananthavady became the first player from Kerala to make it to the inaugural Women’s Premier League (WPL).
During the WPL auction in Mumbai, Delhi Capitals successfully bid for her at Rs 30 lakh. As luck would have it, on the eve of the auction Minnu had scored an unbeaten 74 off 91 balls in the Senior Women’s Interzonal One-day Trophy in Hyderabad. When the players went under the hammer, Minnu had her fingers crossed hoping for the best. But when some big names went unsold, her hopes of joining a WPL team faded for a while.
“Even capped players were going unsold. I was expecting that I would also be unsold. But then Delhi and Bangalore started bidding for me and finally, Delhi got me. It’s a surreal feeling to be part of such a big league,” Minnu, whose base price was Rs 10 lakh, told indianexpress.com.
Minnu’s father Mani is a daily-wage worker and her mother Vasantha is a homemaker. Her sister is studying in a higher-secondary school. One of the first questions her parents asked her after she was bought by Delhi Capitals was when they could watch her play on television.
“Women’s domestic cricket is hardly televised in India. They watched me play once on their phone through the FanCode app. It was during a tournament organised by Kerala Cricket Association. Now, finally, with the WPL, they can see their daughter play, that too, with top international players,” said Minnu, who now pursues a bachelor’s degree through a distance learning course.
Minnu, who bats left-handed and bowls off-spin, has left no stone unturned in her quest to excel in cricket. She travels 42 kilometres one way daily to train at the state cricket association’s stadium in Krishnagiri during the off-season.
“It can be tiring but I don’t want to slack,” Minnu said. “There is no direct bus and I have to take four buses to reach the stadium. So I get up early at around 4 am, help my mother with household chores and leave at around 6 am to reach the ground by 9 am. I get back home by around 7 pm.”
Minnu was the top-scorer for Kerala in the recently concluded women’s one-day tournament with 246 runs from eight matches. She also took 12 wickets. In 2019, she played for India ‘A’ against Bangladesh and represented the national team in the Emerging Women’s Asia Cup tournament.
Cricket, though, wasn’t her first love.
The family wasn’t keen on Minnu switching to cricket from athletics. Track and field is popular in Kerala and they felt cricket was a man’s game.
“They used to ask me, ‘it is a man’s game and why are you playing it?'”
However, every time she was selected for an age-group team they became more and more open to the idea of women’s cricket.
“I was into athletics and used to take part in 400m, and 600m runs. I used to play tennis-ball cricket with boys on paddy fields in my area. My teacher Elsamma, the physical education instructor at Mananthavady Government Vocational Higher Secondary School, turned my focus towards proper cricket when I was in Class 8. She took me to a selection trial for the U-13 district team, and after that, I got selected for Kerala Cricket Association’s junior girl’s camp in Thodupuzha,” said Minnu, who was selected to the Kerala senior team at the age of 15.
One of the first things Minnu wants to buy is a better cricket kit. Most of the money she earned from playing cricket so far went into rebuilding family’s house that was destroyed during landslides caused by the 2018 floods in Kerala.
“The biggest problem women cricketers face is that we get very few matches in a season. Even though the payments have increased over time, it is still not enough to take care of your family and to meet training needs,” Minnu said.
Minnu is now looking forward to rubbing shoulders with Indian stars like Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues and Meg Lanning at Delhi Capitals. “The WPL is a platform to prove your worth as you are playing against the best players in the world, and it is televised. Good performances there can set you up for an India cap,” said Minnu, who thanked long-time Kerala coach Suman Sharma for being a pillar of strength and other coaches at various academies over the years for her rise in the game.
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