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By Sunayana
Through my life, being from a country like
India where cricket is celebrated as a religion,
and from a home where cricket is an in-built
passion, I’ve been a cricket aficionado, if I
could call myself that. With watching all the
important matches that have been played in my
lifetime till now, and keeping myself updated
with most of the facts that I could gather, I’ve
kept up my bit of being loyal to this interest
of mine. Being a quizzer through my school and
college life, I’ve taken part in various sports
quizzes where it came first to my notice of how
I used to get a raised eyebrow when it used to
come to me winning and speaking, because of my
being a ‘girl’.
This led to me questioning whether it really is
very ‘un-girlly’ if I could call it so, because
of my interest in sports and games more than the
commonly regarded hobbies for girls. But, I do
not know whether it was I, or just a casual
growing-up attitude that made me not look at
this as a big deal.
Whatever this case was, I did not give it its
trifles worth and just carried on with this
interest of mine in life. It was later this
interest in the sports which introduced me to
the cricket room in yahoo chat, which brought me
close to many individuals, including girls who
did share a similar passion like mine to the
sport. So this room became a getaway of sorts to
me where I could speak with people who liked
cricket and also getting to know more about
their other interests as well.
Here I met people, who led me on to different
sites online that gave more info on the sport,
which was ‘neat’, as I say casually. And here
again I countered a raised eye-brow many a times
among the guys especially, who would give a
second thought especially that one of a
condescending look as if I had invaded their
private sphere of sorts. A skeptical, yet
sincere question would always be that of what
exactly are you doing in this room, are you
interested in friendship because I know a girl
can't like cricket. Which is according to me,
valid because of the stereotyping of the
so-called appropriateness of choosing interests
and hobbies according to your gender. Also
another common fallacy taken is that of the
girls showing interest in cricket only because
of them finding a particular cricketer hot. I do
not deny that there is fondness or attraction by
the part of women to good-looking cricketers.
But hey, that’s human, and we can’t deny our
human senses can we. (Haha!)
When in one of the trivia’s set
up by my friend ‘exclusively for girls’ I scored
8 on 8, he exclaimed that you are different,
usually girls don’t do well. I question, is this
inborn premise that girls are supposed to be
genetically dumb in their knowledge and
interests towards cricket and other sports
valid? How much of this suppositioning can be
questioned as arrogance? Is this arrogance valid
as our social trends are supposed to be in this
way where we women are to show no interests in
sports and even if we do have interests, they
should not be stated openly? Why is this
so-called difference in interests supposed to be
blindly followed even today as we have entered a
new millenium?
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