NON-FICTION: THE WOMEN IN THE GREEN SHIRTS

Unveiling Jazbaa: A History of Pakistan Women’s Cricket
By Aayush Puthran
Lightstone Publishers
ISBN: 978-969-716-283-3
347pp.
Sharp and focused, Sana Mir in full cricket gear stares straight at you from the cover of Unveiling Jazbaa: A History of Pakistan Women’s Cricket. The book is a “tribute to the pioneering women, who against all odds, established women’s cricket in Pakistan,” Pakistani novelist and policeman Omar Shahid Hamid, who has also penned a novel with women’s cricket as its subject, comments on the cover.
Considering myself not that ill-informed about women’s cricket in Pakistan, and knowing first-hand the struggles of its pioneers, I wanted to see the Khan sisters Shaiza and Sharmeen Khan’s pictures on the book’s front cover. It would have been much more appropriate.
The book, even though it is about Pakistan women’s cricket, has been written by Aayush Puthran, a Mumbai-based cricket journalist. But as British cricket writer Lawrence Booth puts it in one of the back cover comments about the book: “Profound, poignant and important — this was a story that had to be told.” 
Indeed it was and is a story that must be told. At least someone took the pain to write it, even though he hails from India and not Pakistan. As it happens, women’s cricket, like any other women’s sport in this country, is taken far too lightly, as if it is there just to fulfil the meagre purpose of also having a women’s cricket side.
In fact, I myself came to cover women’s cricket as a newbie, in the sports section of my newspaper, when the journalist who covered cricket was looking for someone to unburden himself from women’s cricket, which he considered non-serious. He offered it to me while dismissively telling me that it would help me learn about cricket reporting and deciphering score sheets.
For me, it was the best thing to have happened. My work took me to Shaiza Khan, the founder and captain of the first official Pakistan women’s cricket team. But I was meeting Shaiza at a time when the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had alienated both sisters, even though it had happily helped itself to the team built by them.
And out of the goodness of her heart, not wanting to hurt their careers, Shaiza had also freed the girls from their contracts, following the International Cricket Council (ICC) asking all the boards of cricket-playing countries to establish women’s wings.
Only one of their team members, the world record-holder for the highest score in women’s Test cricket to this day — 242 against the West Indies in a Test match in 2004 — Kiran Baloch remained loyal to her mentors and refused to play for the PCB after seeing the treatment meted out to the sisters.
Kiran Baloch, Sana Mir, Urooj Mumtaz Khan, Nain Abidi, Batool Fatima and the other big names in women’s cricket here were all discovered and groomed by Shaiza and Sharmeen Khan, who were also amazing players themselves. Educated mostly in England, the sisters had started playing cricket for the Winchmore Hill Cricket Club when Shaiza was just 12 and Sharmeen only nine.
Shaiza, a right-arm leg break bowler, also went on to captain Leeds University besides also playing for Middlesex County. The sisters could also often be found practising with the England’s women team.
The girls who left the sisters to play for the PCB should, however, not be seen as anything less or as traitors. Perhaps they were more loyal to the game. They are all strong women and have their own stories of struggle to have reached where they are today. Chasing their dreams, they also faced obstacles and took bold stands.
In fact, it was some of their accounts of courage and defiance that drew the author to them to write their stories — such as 17-year-old Saba Nazir from Muridke, who cut her long locks to masquerade as a boy, just so she could play cricket without being ogled. Unveiling Jazbaa talks of their spirit, passion, desire and sentiments. It is their story of perseverance.

Even though they were daughters of a wealthy carpet merchant, and lived in a palatial house, the Khan sisters also had to face big problems, even as they were quite in control of other matters on the field. They were warned against playing by fundamentalists and even received death threats.
Then came another debate about whether they were even the pioneers of women’s cricket in Pakistan. For there was also the Pakistan Women’s Cricket Association (PWCA), formed in 1977 by Tahira Hameed, a former tennis player who had represented Pakistan at Wimbledon in the 1950s. The PWCA had players picked from women’s colleges, including Kinnaird, in Lahore. But PWCA, despite being formed so early on, didn’t get itself registered or was recognised by the International Women’s Cricket Council (IWCC).
PWCA also failed to make its mark due to infighting and breaking into two factions in its nascent days. But almost 20 years later, in September 1996, there was Shaiza and Sharmeen, who got their Pakistan Women’s Cricket Control Association (PWCCA), registered and associated with the IWCC.
The PWCCA did some fine work. To promote women’s cricket in Pakistan and unearth talent, the well-organised PWCCA — under Shaiza Khan’s visionary leadership — organised championships in various schools and colleges and also held divisional tournaments. They invited players to turn up for camps through announcements in newspapers. They also found support from the PCB, as its then-director Arif Ali Khan Abbasi was keen to encourage women’s sports in Pakistan.
He aided the sisters in setting up the PWCCA and even secured for them the required permissions. The former medium-pace bowler Sarfraz Nawaz, who was at the helm of affairs in the Pakistan Sports Board, also helped get them required approvals. Newspaper clippings with details of their activities would be sent to the IWCC, and their proposal for association with the international body was also accepted.
But one of the PWCA’s two warring factions, headed by the original founder Tahira Hameed and her friend Shirin Javed, was stronger than the other, as Shirin had family links to influential people in the PCB. In 1997, when the PWCCA team was going to India to represent Pakistan in the 1997 Women’s World Cup, they wrote letters to the organisers, informing them that the PWCCA team was not the official Pakistan women’s team. Thankfully, it didn’t work, although it did cause many problems for Shaiza Khan.
Later, in 2005, when the PCB formed its women’s wing, the Punjab players versus Karachi players issue also played out in favour of the PWCA, which started getting involved in the running of affairs of women’s cricket in Pakistan and eventually took complete control of it. Shaiza and Sharmeen became personae non grata and Kiran Baluch gave up cricket because she could not bring herself to tolerate such injustice.
Against that backdrop, there are also stories in the book that make you want to jump up and cheer and also cry out of frustration at the same time. There are stories, too many actually, of girls standing up to conservative families, which then come around and cheered for the girls they once thought were an embarrassment to them.
There are stories about dealing with injuries and coming back into the game with a new focus. There are stories of tough tours, including the 2013 World Cup in India where, due to safety concerns, the team had to be shifted to an isolated location in Odisha. But there they were also showered with so much love by the hosting Odisha Cricket Association, that it even provided them with indoor recreational facilities and brought jewellery and saris from their markets to them to facilitate their shopping.
There are also coming of age stories, like that of Bismah Maroof, who was the baby of the team at just 15 years of age in 2006, but who would go on to take over the reins of captaincy. And the girls’ love for cricket always shines through, even as they retire from the team and go on to become fitness trainers, selectors, commentators, etc.
All in all, this is a great book, bringing on record the history of Pakistan women’s cricket. Aayush Puthran deserves a standing ovation for his hard work in collecting all the facts. But then the publishers have not really been able to match his passion in presenting the book.
The book, which also includes a list of names of 86 women who have played for Pakistan, their statistical highlights, records, individual scores, bowling figures, highest partnerships, biggest and smallest victory margins, and a bibliography, carries no pictures inside other than the postage-size four on the back cover. This is a shame for a superbly engaging book that is otherwise a treasure-trove of history and information.
The reviewer is a member of staff.
X:@HasanShazia
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 6th, 2024