Isa Guha, the first female cricketer of South Asian origin to play for England, took 148 international wickets across formats in a nine-year career with her seam bowling. The World Cup winner is now one of the game’s pioneering female commentators. Excerpts from an interview Guha gave The Hindu at Lord’s:
In the final against New Zealand, you had provided the breakthrough, dismissing Kate Pulford. You were a part of the England team that won the 2009 World Cup.
We were pretty average and we became the best team in the world in 2009. Yes, I founded Take Her Lead in 2022. We did a survey in 2022 with over a thousand women and girls, and the majority said they felt they didn’t belong in the sport. Between the age of 10 and 15, girls drop out of sport 20% more than boys.
Because we know the bigger picture, that people’s attention spans are getting shorter. So that was a big opportunity. And then as a broadcaster, you want to learn as much as possible so that you can be versatile.
With so much pride. There was not much for women’s cricket at that point of time, but I am absolutely fine with that. I went on this journey with this team. I will never forget that journey, with a group of people who did something incredible. It is of course great to see that the women’s game has travelled quite a lot. I think India recognising how important women’s cricket is has been huge for the game. Now the whole game recognises the importance of giving women’s cricket a platform. Sports are having to compete with each other. I was asked to do the Caribbean Premier League, the men’s tournament. No woman had worked on men’s T20 cricket before. And that is where I learned a lot about commentary. Then obviously the IPL. Soon after, it was Australia. I always wanted to be an all-rounded broadcaster. When I was a player, I wanted to be an all-rounder. I always wanted to get good in cricket and then maybe cross over into other sports. I have been lucky to work at Wimbledon for five years now. I do love tennis. When I am at Wimbledon, it really is so magical being there. I played a bit of tennis when I was younger. Cricket is always going to be my home, though. Once I got to play at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, which is where my family is from. But unfortunately, it was at a time that Sourav Ganguly was out of the Test side. And the fans basically were revolting. So no one turned up. Just my grandparents and my family. But it was still special for me. Our purpose is to advance equity and diversity in cricket and increase participation for women and girls. We have done a lot of work to try and change that. We have a mentoring program. We work with a lot of charity partners, like the MCC Foundation and Lord’s Taverners. We deliver mental and social skills to help them feel like they have the skills to be able to succeed in cricket.
And that started long before the WPL started.
