Having watched Issy Wong make a packed DY Patil Stadium stand and cheer for her hattrick, a primary within the Girls’s Premier League, Meena Khanna, a former rapid bowler, is happy as she takes a commute down reminiscence lane. Meena, nicknamed Demon Meena, as a result of stumps would ceaselessly cross cartwheeling when she bowled, performed within the Terance Shone Trophy, carried out from the Fifties to 70s. The trophy used to be contested between the Roshanara Ladies Cricket Membership and the ladies’s crew of the British Top Fee.
“Oh completely,” Meena, an octogenarian, mentioned when requested if she would have appreciated to play below lighting fixtures in the most recent league in India, the WPL. “However you understand, it used to be to this point again that one by no means considered it. Now I’d say sure. However again then, not anything of this type used to be ever within the offing.”
Bagging a hattrick, bowling temporarily, making the ball communicate, Meena had finished all of it. She had tilted the stability of Terance Shone Trophy suits in her crew’s favour so ceaselessly that the British crew gave her a nickname.
“They couldn’t play me, that’s why they began calling me Demon Meena,” she mentioned. Such used to be her repertoire as a quick bowler, an overhand rapid bowler (of which there have been only a few again then), that on the age of 15, the opposition attempted to prevent her from taking part in.
“When the Roshanara crew began, I used to be 14 years previous. We performed the 1st fit and I were given reasonably a couple of wickets on the time. So the following fit they mentioned, ‘No no, we received’t permit anyone below 16 to play’. They simply sought after to break out with that. We insisted.
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Our trainer and umpire used to be Devraj Puri. We used to have males umpiring the suits. They’d any person from the embassy and we had Devraj Puri. So he mentioned, ‘we will be able to no longer concentrate to that and we will be able to play you’. After that, I performed all over.”
For Meena, her affinity against the game got here from her circle of relatives. To not put out of your mind that she used to be a Nationwide Video games discus throw champion. “My uncles, my brothers, everybody performed cricket. I began taking part in it as a result of I had no sisters. I had most effective 3 brothers. It used to be choosing up no matter they have been taking part in. It used to be a cricketing circle of relatives and after that, I married a cricketer too.”
It used to be no accident that Meena would meet her spouse, Col. Anant Kanwar “Nandi” Khanna at a Ranji Trophy fit. “My sons play cricket. It’s in reality in our blood.”
However girls’s cricket within the 50s didn’t have the improve machine it has now.
“In my time, there used to be no training. The suits that we performed with the British Top Fee, it used to be at the foundation of sheer skill. There used to be no cash. No cash by any means.”
Matchday tea and lunch, and the similar all over apply video games used to be all Meena and her teammates were given for enjoying the game. Roshanara would make an exception for his or her superstar participant. “Being a military spouse, we have been posted out of Delhi every so often. Roshanara used to pay my fare and speak to me from anyplace I used to be. To come back and play. That’s about it.”
Photoshoots like those ??
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The Rs 30 lakh that Wong were given after being picked for Mumbai Indians to play for 4 weeks is one thing the likes of Meena may no longer even dream of.
One of the vital previous media clippings and pictures of Meena taking part in cricket display her donning a churidar pajama. “It used to be like dressed in trousers which might be tight. Didn’t hassle me because it didn’t are available the best way (whilst bowling). A salwaar, sure. Afterward, I began dressed in trousers once I went to the nationals. However in a different way, chudidar didn’t hassle me.”
1973 noticed the formation of the Girls’s Cricket Affiliation of India, a yr after the remaining version of the Terence Shone Trophy. It used to be additionally the yr of cricket’s first Global Cup— a girls’s Global Cup. 3 years sooner than the Indian girls’s cricket crew made its debut. For Meena, alternatively, time as a participant used to be coming to an finish.
“I used to be about 34 once I performed my remaining fit with them (Roshanara). By means of then, I had misplaced my pace. For a bowler, particularly any person who’s bowling in-swing, shedding the rate… it’s no longer the similar factor,” she says.
50 years later, with the first-ever Girls’s Premier League ultimate being performed on Sunday, there may be pleasure in her voice as Meena speaks about Wong and the opposite WPL forged participants. “It’s nice now. About time the ladies obtain this type of factor coming their approach. About time they were given that reputation. They’re taking part in rather well.”