The journalists who believed in Indian women’s cricket when few else did

The newsroom is an unfair place. People are assigned beats – insider term for topics like civic affairs, politics, business, sports and entertainment – that get unequal attention. Eventually what gets covered and what makes it to the front page or the prime time slot is meant to be at the editor’s discretion.

It’s their subjective, sometimes whimsical, judgment of what’s important or relevant or likely to resonate.

You have the glamour beats that hog space (say national politics or the men’s cricket team) and the boring beats that get neglected (like public sector units and the women’s cricket team). On a slow news day, the boring beats get minor charitable attention.

This piece is a tribute to the many journalists who have covered women’s cricket in India when it was not automatically destined for the front page. Those silent newsroom entrepreneurs who found a market when nobody else saw it.

When the women played in empty grounds, these journalists sat in empty press boxes. They bootstrapped what they believe in by carrying notebooks, cameras and a stubborn belief that women’s cricket mattered. They barely received seed funding, but have moved from Series A to C, and are on the cusp of the biggest funding round.

This isn’t...

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