Shikha Pandey Urges For More Marketing And Investment In Women's Cricket Instead Of Tinkering With Rules

India women’s all-rounder Shikha Pandey expressed her disappointment at hearing suggestions of rule amendments in women’s cricket. While men’s cricket has exponentially grown over the years, the sport amongst the female counterparts has gone through meteoric rise as well. It may not be long before women’s cricket stand head and shoulders above men’s. The 2020 women’s World T20 was undeniably a significant landmark in the upsurge of women’s cricket.

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It was the most-watched ICC women’s T20 event in history, recording an audience of 89 million. The MCG recorded an audience of 86,174 during the live game. Shafali Verma, Alyssa Healy, Ellyse Perry, and Heather Knight are some of the flag-bearers of modern-day women’s cricket while Mithali Raj and Belinda Clark spearheaded the revolution.

Meanwhile, after hearing suggestions like reducing the weight of the balls and length of the pitches, Shikha Pandey has hit back, saying these are superfluous. It is widely regarded that such recommendations are being made in place to make women’s cricket a more attractive product. Shikha Pandey took to Twitter and cited the example of olympics that female athletes don’t sprint to clock the same timing as their male counterparts.

I have been reading/ hearing a lot about the changes being suggested to help grow women's cricket/ make it a more attractive product. I personally feel most of the suggestions to be superfluous.

(1/n)

— Shikha Pandey (@shikhashauny) June 27, 2020

An Olympic 100m female sprinter doesn't run 80m to win ?and clock the same timing as her male counterpart. So the whole 'decreasing the length of the pitch' for whatever reasons seems dubious. Also, it almost definitely takes the double headers out of question.

(2/n)

— Shikha Pandey (@shikhashauny) June 27, 2020

“Growth can also be achieved by marketing the sport well” : Shikha Pandey

The all-rounder went on to urge the cricketing brains to market the sport potently while also contemplate to introduce technologies like DRS, Snicko, Hotspot, and live broadcast for every game contested in any part of the world.

Apart from that, the 31-year old called for mighty investements at grassroot levels and zero discrimination with respect to playing opportunities. Shikha also requesed women’s cricket not to be compared with males’ as one needs to see it as a different sport altogether.

Please, don't compare women's sport, women's cricket, in this case, with men's sport. We need to see it as a different sport altogether… A sport that 86,174 spectators turned up to watch on March 8, 2020 and several million watched live on their television sets.

(7/n)

— Shikha Pandey (@shikhashauny) June 27, 2020