🕊 Things to Know
Women's T20 Challenge, the Nikhat Zareen- Mary Kom feud & Harsha's return to sports quizzing
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Everything you need to know about the Women T20 Challenge
Hit me with the basics - who, what, when, where?
It’s an international women’s T-20 tournament between three teams - Trailblazers, Velocity and Supernovas - that is conducted in conjunction with the IPL playoffs. This year’s edition is being held in Pune from 23rd-28th May.
Brief me on its history?
Oh, it’s a brief history anyways. The tournament began in 2018 on the back of India’s successful 2017 World Cup campaign in England and was positioned as a precursor to a women’s IPL. It started out as an exhibition game in 2018 before morphing into a three team tournament the following year.
The 2018 WT20 Challenge was played at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, in 2019 it was conducted in front of a near-sellout crowd in Jaipur and in 2020 it was held in the Sharjah bubble. Last year’s edition was called off because of the pandemic.
But, the tournament is going to be history soon. This year’s edition will in all likelihood be the last one. If all goes according to plan, the WIPL will kick off in 2023.
How are the Indian players spread across the teams?
The Trailblazers, captained by Smriti Mandhana, are the current defending champions. Richa Ghosh, Jemimah Rodrigues and Poonam Yadav too turn out for the Trailblazers. Jhulan Goswami, who has been part of the Trailblazers since 2018, is not taking part in the tournament this year.
India’s T20 captain Harmanpreet Kaur leads the pack for the Supernovas, the most successful team in the tournament. The Supernovas also find Taniya Bhatia, Pooja Vastrakar and Harleen Deol in their ranks.
Velocity was added to the Challenge in 2019 and is yet to win the tournament. The team was captained by Mithali Raj until last year but like Jhulan, she too has decided to not take part this time. Deepti Sharma, who made the switch from Trailblazers, is taking the reins this year.
Are foreigners involved?
Yes, they are and just like the IPL, each team is allowed to field four overseas players. This year’s edition features the likes of Sophie Dunkley, Hayley Matthews, Alana King, Sophie Ecclestone and Laura Wolvaardt.
Has the Challenge helped Indian cricket?
To some extent, yes. Shafali Varma burst into the spotlight as a 15 year-old after her showing in the 2019 edition for Velocity. Her power-hitting saw her receive a national call up for the South Africa T20 series that followed the tournament. Harmanpreet Kaur has also acknowledged the role the tournament has played in youngsters Richa Ghosh and Pooja Vastrakar’s development.
This year’s tournament features 12 uncapped Indian players, double the number that were present in the previous edition.
Additionally, yesterday’s game between Trailblazers and Supernovas featured two female umpires for the first time in tournament history! The match referee, too was a woman.
Does the tournament get good viewership?
As per ESPNCricinfo, the 2020 edition of the Women's T20 Challenge garnered 5.34 billion minutes in viewership in India. That's a 2.45-times rise from the 2019 edition. The WT20C in 2020 also had 105 million unique viewers tuning in as compared to the 71 million from the previous year. So yes, it’s on the rise.
It’s to be seen if the viewership will translate to stadium attendance. This year’s edition is the first one to be ticketed, with tickets priced between Rs.100-Rs.300.
And I’m guessing increased viewership helps rake in sponsors?
Spot on! In November 2020, the BCCI declared the tournament as “financially independent”. Jio became the first ever title sponsor for the tournament in 2020 and were joined by a host of other sponsors including Dream11, Tata Altroz, Unacademy, Paytm and CEAT. This year, the title rights have been picked up by My11Circle.
So it must be a well run tournament right?
Not really. The duration of the tournament is farcical and there are also major scheduling issues. The Supernovas, who played the Trailblazers on the opening night, were back in action less than 24 hours later to take on Velocity the following afternoon!
Velocity suffered the same fate in the 2020 edition of the tournament. The heat of Sharjah coupled with the non-existent recovery time led to them being bowled out for 47!
Yikes, that sounds awful! Okay one last question.
Shoot
Did the Inside Edge creators decide the team names for the T20 Challenge?
A Brief Timeline of the Nikhat Zareen-Mary Kom feud
While newly crowned Boxing World Champion Nikhat Zareen was moved to tears by Salman Khan’s congratulatory tweet, the above tweet by Mary Kom would have meant a whole lot more. It wasn’t just the fact that Zareen grew up idolising Kom. Or that she matched Kom’s feat and became India’s second ever boxing world champion. The poignancy of the tweet comes from the fact that it signalled a public burying of a hatchet.
The Kom-Zareen saga first began in 2019 when the veteran boxer was picked ahead of Zareen for the World Championships. Zareen demanded a trial from the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) and after initially accepting her request, they turned it down and cited Kom’s past achievements and recent win over Zareen in the Indian Open as the reason for her selection. Zareen had reasons to be aggrieved; she’d won the gold at the prestigious Strandja Memorial, Europe's oldest international boxing event, a silver at the Thailand Open and also a bronze at the Asian Championships.
Kom went on to win a bronze at the World Championships and was awarded automatic qualification for the Olympic Qualifiers ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. Zareen once again demanded a trial from the BFI and even wrote a letter to then Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju demanding a “fair trial”. The matter became ugly and words were traded.
“Who is Nikhat Zareen, I don’t know her,” Kom said in an interview to Republic TV a couple of days after Zareen sent her letter to Rijiju.
“I am really shocked by all this. I have won eight World Championship medals, including six gold. Let the Boxing Federation of India decide whom they want. How can she cry like this? She cannot lobby to get a place in the Indian team. This is not done,” she said.
"I have been inspired by Mary Kom since I was a teenager. The best way I can do justice to this inspiration was to strive to be as great a boxer as her. And Mary Kom is too big a legend in sport to need to hide from the competition and not actually defend her Olympic qualification," Zareen said at the time.
The BFI eventually ruled in favour of Zareen and granted her the trial. The bout didn’t live up to its billing, with Kom trouncing Zareen 9-1. But the drama didn’t end there; the two didn’t have the customary post game handshake and Kom’s refusal to hug Zareen left the young boxer in tears.
For Zareen, this nadir was the base from which she built herself up.
“My only focus since then has been to work even harder and come back strong. That's something that I am focusing on. I am looking forward to the future. I believe everything happens for a good reason,” she said in an interview last year.
The future was as bright as Zareen had foreseen and if Twitter interactions are anything to go by, the past too has been let go off. Below, is Zareen’s response to Kom’s congralutaroy tweet
Thank you so much di, it motivates me to work more hard and make our country proud as you’ve done 😇 🙏
Person of Interest
Harsha Bhogle will be helping us fill the post-IPL void in our lives this year. Starting from next week , he will be reprising his role as a quizmaster for a national level interschool sports quiz. The Ultimate Sports Quiz, which is to be launched on the Sony Sports Network, will be aired every Saturday and Sunday at 1pm.
USQ will host 27 schools from 22 different cities across the country. The winning school receives Rs.1 crore in prize money to develop its sporting infrastructure and the team gets the opportunity to attend any sporting event of their choice in the world.
During the early 2000s, Harsha used to host the immensely popular show ESPN School Quiz. In an Instagram Live session from May 2020, he spoke warmly of his five years hosting the show and how he still receives messages from past contestants. He cited his inability to handle the sadness and disappointment of the losing team as the reason for walking away from the show after five years. But, he also spoke of his hope for a show of that ilk to be brought back.
“If it can be done with the same warmth, the same happiness, without screaming, without celebrating defeat and understanding each other then yes, it can be done. But remember, if you’re doing a school quiz. joy but empathy is also very important for whoever is doing this,” he said.
We couldn’t think of anyone better suited for this role.
Direct Hits
You know how the old adage goes - teams that make films together win tournaments together. This clip of the filmmaking competition held in the RCB bubble a couple of weeks ago is an absolute riot.
Is there anything Harshal Patel cannot do?
Question of the Week:
What job did Harshal Patel take up in the US?
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In last week’s edition:
The unheralded hero of the Thomas Cup success
Kerala’s growing football domination
Ambati Rayudu’s retirement U-turn
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So well put !