For five young Odia women who started playing blind women’s cricket for their state just four years back, being shortlisted for the national team fills them with hope to represent India internationally.
Phula Soren of Salamani village in Baleswar district of Odisha is eyeing a bright future, though she is blind.
As a budding blind woman cricketer, 16-year-old Soren has just been chosen for the national camp which will lead to the selection of the first Indian blind women’s cricket team that will take on Nepal in an upcoming bilateral series.
Selection for the national camp is a giant leap for Soren in realising her ambition. Naturally, she is thrilled.
“I am hopeful, and my cricketing future looks very bright,” she said.
Soren for that matter is among five tribal girls from remote corners of Odisha who have made the cut for the camp.
All of them are ecstatic. And they have valid reasons to be.
For one, they obviously had to contend with their visual impairment. Then, they had to overcome their impoverished family backgrounds and the hurdle of distance since all of them lived in the state’s far-flung places.
In pursuing their love for the bat and ball, the young women were also up against general apathy.
Despite the passion for cricket in India that treats the sport as some sort of a religion, blind women’s cricket has generally been neglected.
People in my village still can’t believe that I might soon be playing cricket at an international level
While competitive blind cricket for men has existed internationally since 1998, there were no opportunities for Indian women until recently. It was only in 2019 that the Cricket Association for the Blind in India (CABI) organised the country’s first national tournament for women.
And it is only now that an Indian team of blind women cricketers is being given shape.
The new opportunities have allowed ambitions of cricketers such as Soren to take wings.
Cricket for the blind is somewhat different from the regular game played by the likes of Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah.
The ball is larger than the regular cricket ball and contains ball bearings. This means it makes a jangling sound, allowing the players to judge where the ball is travelling and its speed.
Players also must take verbal cues from other players and the umpire.
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Soren and the other shortlisted four – Jamunarani Tudu, Basanti Hansda, Jhili Birua and Padmini Tudu – have grabbed the chance with both hands.
Each one of them deserved it richly for bailing them out of their ‘dark’ existence.
Basanti Hansda, for example, lost her vision at the age of four when another child accidently pierced her eyes with a needle. Born to poor parents in Murgapadi village of Mayurbhanj district, life has not been easy.
But then cricket happened. Now 18, Hansda pursues her studies and practices the game with equal passion.
“My parents depend on rainfed agriculture for a living. After the tharvesting is done, they come to live with me in Bhubaneswar where my college is,” she said.
In Odisha’s capital – where the parents work as labourers – the family is perhaps at the bottom of the social ladder. But Hansda’s cricketing exploits have given the family something to be proud of.
“My daughter is the first ever national cricket player from our village. How can we not be proud of her,” exclaimed her mother Jamuna excitedly.
Phula Soren’s journey as a cricketer has been equally remarkable.
Studying in a special school for the differently abled, she first took up cricket just as an activity to spend spare time. But then the love for the game grew and she began harbouring dreams of becoming a professional cricketer.
“People in my village still can’t believe that I might soon be playing cricket at an international level,” she said. For that matter, she is already the captain of Odisha’s blind women’s cricket team.
Like Soren and Hansda, Jamunarani Tudu too desperately wished to escape the backbreaking poverty. A resident of Hathigot village in Mayurbhanj, all that the 21-year-old could think of was completing her studies in Bhubaneswar’s Rama Devi Women’s University and getting a job.
Now though, she is more preoccupied with thoughts of how not to bowl a wide during matches. She is an all-rounder and she delivers quite a few wides during practice sessions.
“That should not happen during actual matches,” she said.
Jhilli Birua’s journey to the national camp has also been remarkable.
She worked in farms in Jhanjala of Keonjhar district, having lost her mother at a young age and then her father to an accident.
Then she discovered cricket.
“The credit goes to my mentor Iqbal Jafar and coach Debashish Jena,” she said. Jafar is a world cup winning blind cricketer.
“In 2015 when I returned from an international tournament a visually impaired girl asked if she too could play cricket,” recollected Jafar.
The innocent query triggered an idea, and soon Jafar along with some others started to coach girls with visual impairment.
In 2018, a special tournament was held in Bhubaneswar for teams representing different districts of Odisha. The best players then went on to play for the state in the first ever national tournament in 2019.
Now that an Indian national team is being chosen, Phula Soren and the four others are among the 38 shortlisted cricketers. Those who get selected ultimately will represent India.
The final selection is still sometime away. But already, the five blind women cricketers from Odisha are lighting up the cricket field.
The lead image shows a visually-challenged young woman from Odisha playing blind women’s cricket (Photo by Iqbal Jafar)
Aishwarya Mohanty is an independent journalist based in Odisha. She reports on the intersection of gender, social justice, rural issues and the environment. She is also a Rural Media Fellow powered by Youth Hub.
