I first heard of Mithali Raj in June 1999 when, as a 16-year-old debutant, she scored an unbeaten 114 in a one-day international cricket tournament against Ireland at Milton Keynes. Newspapers duly made comparisons to Sachin Tendulkar, and then forgot about her. The next I heard of her was three years later, when in her third Test match she scored 214 against England, the highest in women’s Test cricket back then. The newspapers talked about her again. The same week, on the BBC TV quiz show Mastermind India, was a question on Mithali’s 214. I got the answer just as the buzzer sounded and won that day. I think that was when I decided I was a Mithali Raj fan.

I know this sounds slightly deranged... that I felt a personal connect with a cricketer just because she was an answer to a quiz question that I got right. It has never been so with other cricketers. Wasim Akram? It was because I watched him, a fellow left-armer, on television, bowling like he did not believe in the laws of physics. Mohammed Azharuddin? Because someone who looked frail, like I once used to, was showing that batting could be as successful with finesse as with power. Rahul Dravid? He was a reminder that erudite men too could be great practitioners of the game — a “my sort of guy”. Women’s cricket, on the other hand, was almost never on television, and got media coverage only when something extraordinary happened — and Mithali, extraordinary as she was, needed some help from a television quiz show.

Mithali knows this too. During the previous Women’s World Cup in 2013, she told a journalist, “I think more often people relate to me by my name. If I get introduced then they’re like, ‘yeah, you’re a woman cricketer’, but because I’m not very often on television people don’t recognise me by my face, but definitely by my name.” In India, many will recognise a Yuzvendra Chahal or a Dinesh Karthik even off the field. They are on television so much, it does not matter that they are no big achievers in international cricket.

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There really is a lot of cricket on television these days. A lot of it not cricket at all.

Rajputana Premier League, for instance, was being televised on a mainstream sports channel until, suddenly, matches were cancelled because half a dozen players were arrested for alleged involvement in spot and match fixing. Tamil Nadu Premier League, bankrolled by N Srinivasan’s India Cements Ltd, is on television too, serving primarily as daily match-long advertisements for the re-entry of the banned Chennai Super Kings into the Indian Premier League (IPL). There was also a North Indian Champions League, wherein most of the players made me feel okay about my lack of fitness or talent. Yet, I cannot recall a single bilateral series of women’s cricket or non-ICC tournament that was telecast live. So followers of this international sport willy-nilly end up feeling like cricket fans of a pre-television generation.

On the rare occasion that you do get to watch Mithali on television, her batting too seems to be a throwback to how cricket was played a few generations ago. She usually wears a broad-brimmed hat, but it sits on her head like she is at a picnic on the beach, rather than a duel across a 22-yard pitch. She scores runs at a brisk clip, but the ball is never walloped, it is instead respectfully requested, at times cajoled even, to go past the boundary... and the ball often complies. She does not run much, she prefers to jog across leisurely. A habit that may have cost her wicket in the World Cup final against England. But, unlike her male counterpart Virat Kohli, the loss of her wicket does not make her erupt into the tantrums of a man-child. She merely sighs, and walks off. But more often than not, it is a long while before she is out. Before she comes out to bat, she is not tackling throwdowns or warming up. She is usually seated on the sidelines reading a book. This World Cup, we spotted The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, and Playing with Fire by Nasser Hussain.

The nonchalance and grace at the crease... there’s a reason for that. Cricket has not been a lifelong burning passion for Mithali. She does not watch cricket in her spare time. She reads books, or sketches. In an old interview, she said, “I played it more out of curiosity and to prove to my dad that I was good. I cemented my place and developed a reputation, but it wasn’t until really late, 2009, that I actually started loving the game.” Remember, by 2009, a decade after her debut, she had already established herself as an all-time great, and the greatest woman cricketer in India. Yet she was just beginning to love the game. What she really was interested in was dance. That sort of explains her always-perfect footwork on the crease.

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In sports, records usually fall to those who are all-consumed by their pursuit of perfection. Think Sachin Tendulkar, Roger Federer, the Real Madrid football club, et al. But sometimes they fall to those like Mithali, as well. She is the only woman to have hit over 6,000 ODI runs and the most number of consecutive half-centuries — seven. For good measure, she has two other streaks of four consecutive half-centuries as well. The cricket writer Jarrod Kimber, who is good with adjectives, picked “obscene” for Mithali’s batting talent. From the etymology it makes perfect sense — the Latin obscenus referred to things that were offensive to modesty. Surely there is nothing modest about Mithali’s batting returns.

What is modest though is the number of matches she has played. And this despite a long career. At 186 ODIs, she has clocked far less than half of what a male cricketer would in an 18-year unbroken stint with the national team. She has played only 10 Tests. In fact, for eight years (2006-14), she played zero Tests, because there were none to be had. This is the tragedy of women’s cricket. There just never has been enough of it. The first women’s Test was in 1934, between England and Australia. And neither country has reached the 100-Tests mark. The first Women’s World Cup for ODIs was in 1973, two years before the men’s. Women’s cricket has a lot of history. What it has always lacked is a ‘present’. One of the things Mithali has been spearheading, especially in the second half of her career, when she started loving the game, are efforts to ensure that women’s cricket has a future.

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Here is Mithali in 2014: “We are touring England in August and we are playing one Test. Though I have scored 214 in a Test match, I am playing a Test after eight long years. It is sad that there are so few Test matches in women’s cricket and I hope the boards come together and organise more.”

Here is Mithali again in 2014, before the T20 World Cup. “The T20 World Cup will be important in popularising the game. If we do well in it, it will definitely give birth to the women’s IPL.” India did not do well. She said something on those lines again during the 2016 T20 World Cup. And in the post-match press conference after India’s loss to England in the 2017 edition, she again expressed hopes for a women’s IPL.

Why does Mithali want more international matches? Why does she want a women’s IPL? It is simple. The things men take for granted, such as knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents, become impossible for the women because they have never played with or against their rivals before. Now that she loves women’s cricket, she wants it to be the best sport there is. She wants a revolution. Before the latest World Cup: “We want to win the World Cup because it would be a revolution kind of a thing for Indian women’s cricket.” In the end, they faltered just a bit, at the very last step in a battle of nerves against England, but they nevertheless sparked off the revolution. The TV ratings are proof, as are the buzz and noise on Facebook and Twitter. And for the sake of the future Mithalis, and with due apologies to Gil Scott- Heron, I do hope this revolution will continue to be televised.