The year was 2013 and I was midway through a PhD researching the history of women’s cricket. It had been a genius move on my part to pick a subject where I got to spend my days in the British Library reading old copies of Wisden, and call it “work”. On the other hand, living at home with my parents at the age of 25, I did sometimes worry about what I might do with my life when it was all over.
The women’s game was still far from hitting the big time. A few months earlier, only a handful of matches from the World Cup had been televised, while several fixtures had to be moved from the Wankhede Stadium just days before the tournament was due to start after the BCCI decided they wanted to use it for the Ranji Trophy instead. My sister, in Mumbai at the time, had no idea that cricket’s biggest global tournament was taking place just down the road.