The ongoing inaugural Women’s T20 World Cup Cricket is underway, marking a historic milestone for women’s sports.
The players have overcome immense challenges and delivered remarkable performances to reach this stage, demonstrating both skill and resilience on the world stage.
The T20 tournament comprises a six-team event featuring India, Nepal, Pakistan, Lanka, Australia, and the USA, which began on November 11 in Delhi.
Blind cricket uses a plastic ball with metal bearings that clink, and players are grouped by sight: B1, B2 and B3.
It is necessary to field a team with players from all three sight categories (B1, B2, and B3). B1 batters use runners for safety, and each run they score counts as two.
However, Indian’s team is captained by Deepika TC, a Karnataka local who lost her sight as a baby after an incident.
She shared her experience, “This is the biggest moment of my and my team’s life. Earlier this month, the sighted Indian women’s cricket team won the World Cup in Navi Mumbai, and we want to make it a double this month.”
On the contrary, another player on the team, Anekha dev, 20 from Jammu and Kashmir was partially blind.
Her hard work led her to reach the national team, and she quickly adopted the audible ball system.
One of the intriguing examples is of women who have been performing diligently, and their tournaments have been noted for their powerful displays of sportsmanship.
The Cricket’s Association for the Blind in India (CABI) was established in 2011. The proactive process for a women’s team began in 2019, leading to their first international match and a gold medal at the IBSA World Games in Birmingham in 2023.
In this connection Mahantesh GK, CABI’s chairperson said, “We believed we were doing injustice by not giving visually impaired women the same opportunities as the men.”
He was of the view that creating such a tournament took huge efforts and presented a crucial challenge in building good teams.
However, he believed the positive response would contribute to making the world a more inclusive place and achieving remarkable things.
The semifinals and final of the World Cup will be held in Colombo, and all matches are streamed live on CABI’s YouTube channel and state-run Prasar Bharati platforms.
The final is a historic stage where India’s blind women are not just chasing a trophy but are also setting an example for other teams and earning respect for disabled athletes.
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