It’s not easy to play competitive cricket at the highest level, it gets hard to play it if you are a woman because of the lack of money, and hardest if you are a woman of South Asian descent trying to play the game in the United Kingdom, having very few role models.
Similar problems were faced by England International Sonia Odedra, a British Indian woman, whose father tried everything to make her brother an international cricketer, but instead, it was Sonia who went on to represent England.
"My dad was a massive cricket fan and he wanted my brother to become a cricketer actually, so all the focus was on him," Sonia was quoted as saying to Sky Cricket.
"So I just used to play in the garden with him just casually. And the first game I actually played was at primary school. I got into the boys’ team there and we went on to become school champions,’ she added narrating her childhood story.
But the path got a bit blurry after primary school for Sonia. "I remember after that when I went to secondary school, there was no opportunity for girls to play cricket. It was just boys only. So it kind of stopped there," she said.
Even without any cricket during her growing up days, Sonia, now 33 years old, never left her dream of playing cricket. "At the age of 20, I decided that I want to play cricket professionally. It was just after I finished my studies and I just thought that this is what I want to do," said the Nottinghamshire Women represent.
Odedra, who has represented England Woman in a Women’s Test against Indian Women in 2014 started her journey from Leicester. "My journey started here at the City Cricket Academy (in Leicester). There was a little job advert here and I thought I'd do a part-time job and at the same time train and achieve the goal to play for England."
She did achieve the goal. However, she could only play one Test but became only the second Asian Woman after Isa Guha to represent the English Women’s side.