From Mumbai to Raipur: The New Economics of Gender Parity in Indian Cricket

On the morning of the first match at Raipur's Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium, I noticed a small detail. After the training session ended, some of the younger players in the Indian women's squad were stretching together in a corner of the ground — not in separate groups around Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur, but as one unit. At first it looked unremarkable. Then I thought about it: this image is actually the biggest story in Indian women's cricket right now — the one nobody is writing, because it doesn't appear on any scorecard. Only eight players overlap between the two format squads. Fifteen in each, twenty-two distinct cricketers across the two lists. The structure is built around Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Harmanpreet Kaur and Richa Ghosh at the core, but the names filling the edges — Kamalini, Niki Prasad, Anushka Sharma, Prema Rawat — none of them have been regulars in any major tournament squad over the past three years. This isn't rotation. This is an infrastructural decision. The board is saying: we now treat the two formats as two separate projects. The biggest signal actually comes from the captaincy designations. In both T20I and ODI, Smriti Mandhana is captain. The vice-captains differ by format: Shafali in T20Is, Deepti in ODIs. But the most significant element is that Harmanpreet Kaur's name carries no [C] or [VC] tag. When a former long-serving captain appears in a squad purely as a player, that is never a neutral event. In the press release signed by BCCI Honorary Secretary Devajit Saikia, this was not stated formally, but the structure itself says it — the captaincy handover process has begun. One thing needs to be made clear here. Nobody is treating the India-Zimbabwe series as a marquee matchup. On ICC rankings, India Women sit in the top tier; Zimbabwe is far below. The real purpose of a series like this is never competition. It wasn't stated officially, but what the entire structure reveals is: workload management, elevating the next generation from the domestic pool onto the big stage, and building separate core groups for the two formats. When a bowler bowls across six series in three months, playing her in every match means using her as fuel. The Indian selection committee understands that — at least in this series. But this is where the biggest story is hiding, the one nobody is telling. Franchise cricket for women in India is now a top-tier economic engine. When a system can throw crores at an annual auction, that system's handbook changes. What we're seeing so far is that the public wants regular revenue streams even more than it wants the very best cricketers. That's not a tragedy — it's reality. Strike-rate, boundary percentage, ball speed — these metrics don't create real assets. Assets are created by ticket sales, sponsors, and television. The addition of Renuka Thakur and Sayali Satghare to the ODI squad signals exactly this economic logic. Both are experienced pacers. In T20Is, where pace and variety matter, and in ODIs, where long spells demand patience — these are different needs. Looking at both squads together, you can see how consciously the selectors have considered the practical demands of each format. The same structure drives every decision — T20I as sprint, ODI as marathon. And with less competition in the marathon, long-format players get more opportunity. Now I sense a contradiction here. What bothers me internally: as a 35-year-old cricket writer, I know the selection committee may not be thinking about transition at all — it may simply be building separate lists for the two formats' needs. Yet a very similar set of decisions was made in another series three months ago, and the young players who failed there still haven't returned. A trend requires three or four series — one series is not enough. This is why I'm writing this piece two weeks after the squad announcement, not before. The tournament's heat cycle is currently in the germination phase. The long-imagined "new era" narrative will only truly begin when India wins a major tournament final under Mandhana's captaincy — that could be an Asia Cup, could be a World Cup stage. This series is really the first step of that journey, where team chemistry is being built, not competition. India winning this series against Zimbabwe is almost certain. But that shouldn't be the metric for evaluating this series. The real question is whether newcomers get room to experiment when they miss out, rather than being dropped. Another question: how long does this format-based division hold. Because if one player only plays T20Is and another only ODIs — how deep will the national team's internal communication and understanding really be? The biggest challenge isn't team-related, isn't format-related — rather the question is how Indian cricket administration, broadcasters and sponsors want to see this transitional team. In volatile situations, good outcomes are almost always the product of structural decision-making, not emotion. The selection committee, I believe, is working on exactly this premise — now the question is whether those decisions hold up in two high-profile series as well.