Beyond the Boundary: Deconstructing Gendered Narratives in Indian Women’s Cricket Discourse

The connection between India and cricket is deeply ingrained in the country’s social fabric, representing a shared passion that transcends geographical, linguistic, and cultural diversities. On the other hand, cricket has great inequality within itself in terms of gender as cricket is often seen as a symbol of hegemonic masculinity. Although women’s cricket in India has witnessed remarkable growth and recognition in recent years, challenges such as unequal pay, limited visibility and infrastructure disparities persist, emphasising the ongoing need for advocacy and support to ensure the continued growth and success of women’s cricket in India. This paper undertakes the task of exploring the significant role Mithali Raj played in shaping the landscape of women’s cricket in India, through the biographical movie of her, titled Shabaash Mithu (2022). Even though the film is a biography of a single woman, it thoroughly portrays the history of women’s cricket in India along with the identity crisis, gender discrimination and social ostracism faced by “Women in Blue.” This paper also discloses that gender roles are constructed by the social, cultural and historical context rather than biology itself, which aims to convey the scholarly exploration of how narratives surrounding women’s cricket in India are shaped by gendered perspectives. So, this inquiry is to examine the gendered narratives in Indian cricketing culture and to inspect the narratives that challenge the stereotypical representation of women in Indian cricket by particularly employing textual reading of the rhetoric and symbolism in the film.