With Smriti Mandhana, Red Bull aims to grow women's cricket with their RBCC Women's championship

‘Yeh cricket wagera, ladkiyo ke liye nahi hai (Cricket is not for girls),” our sports teacher said when we asked if a girl, who had Sachin Tendulkar notebook stickers and MS Dhoni bubble gum tattoos, could come along and play with us. This was in 2007. The same year Chak de India was released. Standing there, it didn’t feel anything wrong, after all, I had never watched a woman, let alone a girl, play the sport on TV. For that little girl, it was hard to explain why she wanted to play with us and she was shut down. 

14 years since that incident, things have changed quite a lot. Now, we don’t just get to watch women play cricket, but every young girl has a hero. Now, no 10-year-old girl needs to idolize Dhoni or Tendulkar in order to show her passion, instead, she has Smriti Mandhana, Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur and so many more names to look up to.

It’s time to embrace all of that and welcome young girls and women to get all the riches and praise they deserve for turning up good performances. 

How the 2017 World Cup changed the face of women’s cricket in India

A lot of credit for the growth of women’s cricket in India has to go to the campaign of the Indian women’s cricket team during the World Cup in England in 2017. ‘Haar ke bhi jeetne wale ko baazigaar kehte hai’ was never more accurate for any other achievement. The spirited team who lost the final by just an inch against the hosts at the Lord’s Cricket Ground won the hearts of each and every Indian.

It was a tight slap on the faces of every person, who said women’s cricket wasn’t something admirable. Yet, something pushed those girls year after year to reach the pinnacle. And when they did, the country took notice. A bit late, but finally. 

In the last four years, the Indian women’s team has shown that they can stand tall and play as a world-class unit despite most of them not getting equal opportunities at a very young age. The whole concept of nurturing talent starts with getting a proper opportunity. The process of making athletes in any sport is quite simple; you take them young, you train them, you get their muscles ready and when it’s time, you give them the right opportunity and platform to showcase their skills. 

For the longest, opportunities didn’t come easily for the young girls and women in our country. But things are changing slowly and steadily. Inclusiveness is the only step forward for the game which we love and without that, there is no future, there is no growth. Hence, people at Red Bull came together in 2021 to add something to their already amazing university-level tournament. 

The success of Red Bull Campus Cricket and its inaugural women’s edition in 2021

Launched in 2012, the Red Bull Campus Cricket is a one-of-its-kind tournament where college teams compete. The tournament has grown from four cities and 32 teams in their inaugural season to 32 cities and 450 teams in the 10th edition which took place recently. They organize a similar tournament in Sri Lanka, England, Australia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and South Africa. The champions from each country play in an international tournament. 

But, the biggest leap which the brand Red Bull has taken in terms of growing this tournament is by adding women’s cricket to the forefront. All the first nine editions were exclusively for men cricketers, but the 10th edition was a landmark as they launched the first-ever women’s tournament of RBCC. 16 teams from four cities competed (similar to the inaugural men’s edition) and the top teams met in the final, on the same day as the final of the men’s tournament. 

Rizvi College from Mumbai defeated Gargi College from Delhi at the IS Bindra PCA Stadium in Mohali on October 22, 2021, to become the first-ever champions. Interestingly, they followed the footsteps of their men’s team who had also won the inaugural men’s competition way back in 2012. That team had Siddhesh Lad and Shardul Thakur.

They competed with the likes of KL Rahul, Karun Nair, Mayank Agarwal. In the last decade, RBCC has seen several cricketers get fast-tracked to domestic cricket or IPL after a good performance in the tournament. The latest sensation who came out of RBCC is Ruturaj Gaikwad. 

The path forward for women’s cricket and how RBCC can help

The point being, in 10 years of this event, the growth has been quite magnificent. The tournament helped players understand how to develop the T20 game and also be good at it. Apart from this, the tournament has allowed them to get fast-tracked to the IPL or domestic teams of their states. Now, in the next decade, there will be a huge amount of growth in women’s cricket, not just in India but also across the globe. There is no doubt that the RBCC will set a benchmark for bringing in new talents from across the country, but not just for men but also for women. 

For championing their aim, Red Bull has joined hands with Smriti Mandhana, who is touted to be the future captain of the Indian cricket team. In fact, the main objective of signing her as an athlete was around this tournament.

“I’m really happy that the Red Bull Campus Cricket Women’s Championship has started. When I first joined Red Bull and understood about the tournament for boys, my first question was ‘When are you starting something for girls?’ And they said ‘That’s why you are here. We really want to start the tournament for girls with your guidance.’ And here it is. They did what they promised and we are here for the first year of the Red Bull Campus Cricket Women’s Championship,” says Smriti. 

Not just this, the team of Red Bull made sure that Rizvi College captain Tanisha Gaikwad and Gargi College captain Tanya Vajpayee had a chance to chat with Mandhana. Vajpayee who is a left-hander batter herself says she is heavily inspired by the Indian star. She has previously shared a dressing room with Shafali Verma, another rising star, and opines that parents in Haryana have pushed their daughters to take up sports more than ever since Verma made her name on the international stage. 

Tanisha of Rizvi, on the other hand, said that it was a great experience for her and her team to play at such a high standard. “It helped us by giving us more match practice and opportunity to play on world-class grounds like PCA stadium in Mohali.” But she also has a cheeky little wish and says, “Like boys have international matches, we are looking forward to that.”

There is no doubt that the Red Bull Cricket Campus women’s championship will see exponential growth in the next few years. It is a step in the right direction as we await the tournament to unleash more and more serious talents from grassroots level cricket and show their true potential. The more quickly these young and upcoming girls get opportunities at a higher level, they would just be able to become professionals quickly but also stand tall in a man’s world with pride, hunger, and respect similar to the who’s who of cricket.