{"id":75078,"date":"2025-11-07T23:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/nov\/07\/india-women-cricket-world-cup-win-victory-equality"},"modified":"2025-11-07T23:00:01","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T14:00:01","slug":"hit-for-six-why-indias-womens-cricket-world-cup-win-is-victory-for-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=75078","title":{"rendered":"Hit for six: why India\u2019s Women\u2019s Cricket World Cup win is victory for equality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sacrifices made to reach final \u2013 defying social stigma, lack of resources and juggling jobs between training \u2013 makes victory still more extraordinary<\/p>\n

Growing up in rural India, Shafali Verma always knew she had a hunger to play cricket. But in her small town of Rohtak, in the north Indian state of Haryana, cricket was not a game for girls. Aged nine, desperate to play, she cut her hair short, entered a tournament disguised as her brother, and went on to win man of the match.<\/p>\n

Verma\u2019s determined father, Sanjeev, in the face of refusal from every cricket academy or training centre who would not accept his daughter, enrolled her as a boy. \u201cLuckily, nobody noticed,\u201d he recalled<\/a>, as Verma made her debut for the national women\u2019s team at 15 years old.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sacrifices made to reach final \u2013 defying social stigma, lack of resources and juggling jobs between training \u2013 makes victory still more extraordinaryGrowing up in rural India, Shafali Verma always knew she had a hunger to play cricket. But in her small…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[499,62,79,61,203,281,3223,3429,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cricket","category-india","category-society","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sport","category-women","category-womens-cricket","category-womens-cricket-world-cup","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75079,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75078\/revisions\/75079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}