WOMEN AT THE WICKET

Asia's women's cricket teams from outside the Indian subcontinent have been rapidly rising up through the ranks, creating opportunities, breaking barriers and changing the game as they go

- Rachel Duffell

At eight years old, Winifred Duraisingam started playing cricket on the streets with her brother and his friends— though they wouldn’t always let her play with them. 

“Back then, when I started, there were no women playing cricket,” says Duraisingam, who desperately wanted to bat, but the boys said she couldn’t because she was a girl. Her uncle stepped in and put a rule in place that whoever took a wicket could go into bat. And then he taught her how to bowl; soon, she was consistently bowling everyone out. 

“In the end, I said it’s okay, you all can bat, I will just bowl,” recalls Duraisingam. “And then they were all so scared of me, because [I was] a girl taking a boy’s wicket. That’s how my cricket started—out on the streets.”

Duraisingam started playing for a Malaysian club team at the age of 13, where in one tournament she bowled out Hector Durairatnam, the former captain of the Malaysia men’s national team. Approaching Duraisingam’s uncle, who was also the coach, after the game, Durairatnam enquired who the “young boy” who had bowled him out was. Her uncle replied, “That’s not a young boy; that’s my niece!” Durairatnam suggested she join the national pool and a year later she made her debut on the women’s national team. 

Duraisingam’s first tournament at the age of 14 was the Asian Cricket Council’s (ACC) women’s tournament in Malaysia. It was 2007 and still early days for women’s cricket in Asia outside the Indian subcontinent, where the sport was more established. Eight teams were involved: Bangladesh, China, Singapore, the UAE, Nepal, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. All, aside from full member Bangladesh, were and remain associate members of the International Cricket Council (ICC), indicating that cricket is well established in these places but the teams aren’t allowed to play official Test matches (limited to full members).