“Let’s just see if there’s a market there. And so we put out an ad and in 24 hours we got 250 signups.”
Women’s cricket is booming in Pakistan. Largely thanks to the work of Hadeel Obaid, founder of Khelo Kricket.
“I wish I could capture that feeling and bottle it up,” she says of the moment she stepped into the floor for the first women’s tournament, played from dusk to dawn, which she hosted in 2016. .
“To see fathers, brothers and mothers of daughters who had pushed their daughters to the ground and were moved [seeing them play].
“Mothers were literally crying for me and saying ‘thank you for giving our daughters this opportunity’.
“They always had talent, we always wanted to do it but we were never able to give the girls a chance.”
Opportunities for female athletes increase in the context of a socially conservative nation.
Depending on location and privilege, women find more opportunities to play or are prevented from doing so because it compromises their modesty.
A look at the composition of the men’s and women’s national cricket teams gives some insight.
While much of the men’s team comes from socially and economically conservative backgrounds, the women’s team tends to come from more affluent families, who are much more likely to be liberal enough not to oppose what women do in sports.
Obaid, whose own family runs a successful textile business, launched Khelo Kricket in 2015 – first as a website to cover and promote men’s cricket in Pakistan.
Then it diversified and Khelo organized its own tournaments. Again, only for men.
“We didn’t even know there was a market [for women],” she explains.
However, this would change as the holy month of Ramadan approaches in 2016.
Dusk-to-dawn cricket during Ramadan is a staple of Pakistani culture. In Karachi in particular, every field and street is set aside to allow competitions to run through the night once the fast is broken.
The kicker being, they are – or were – reserved for men.
“We weren’t sure if women would be allowed to play cricket at night,” says Obaid.
“The idea of girls playing cricket from dusk till dawn is not something you think of when you think of Pakistani women. Or any woman playing cricket anywhere in the world .”
Nonetheless, Obaid pitched the idea and was rewarded with immediate demand.
“Oh my god,” she recalls, laughing at the flooding of entries, “we didn’t plan such a big tournament.”
With operations booming, Obaid had to limit the competition to four teams as they only had the pitch for one night. She also had to deal with the criticism that was directed at her.
“I received a lot of backlash for my first two events,” she explains. “I did them during Ramadan, it was ‘blasphemy’, ‘how can girls play at night’? I don’t care about those things.
“Don’t you want your daughters to play?” Okay. But don’t tell me that other girls don’t want to play, because we see the number increasing.
Ramadan allowed tournaments to begin, but demand would mean it would increase rapidly.
The initial tournament was held only in Karachi in 2016, but starting in 2023, Khelo Kricket holds five scheduled tournaments per year with 10-12 teams across the country.
Matches are a maximum of 20 overs per side, with some being tapeballs – the more accessible version of the game where a tennis ball is wrapped in electrical tape – and hardballs. They are all, however, cricket.
“Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi will probably be the ones we’re going to do,” Obaid says.
“We also want to do one in Abbottabad or somewhere up north because there are a lot of girls playing cricket, who keep messaging us and saying ‘just one tournament, please. please just give us this opportunity to play “.”
“Giving girls a safe space to play cricket is amazing”
Local women’s academies, which help grow the game, field many teams and with prize money donated by competition sponsors, the money earned flows back into the academies in a self-proclaimed funding ecosystem.
Already, the tournament has led the way, with 21-year-old Pakistani fast thrower Fatima Sana, who made her debut for her country in 2019, winning player of the tournament in the first ever competition to take place.
“The first time she performed,” Obaid recalled, “I remember looking at her and thinking, this girl is amazing.”
And she was right. In 2022, Sana was named the ICC Emerging Cricketer of the Year.
“I met her when she was 12, so I’ve seen her over the years and seeing how she got into the PCB system and where she is now is amazing.
“The fact that we are able to give girls a platform, a safe space to play cricket, is something that I will always find amazing.
“And the fact that I gave them this fearless ability to play cricket at night, once a year, and have fun, which was only for boys, I think I’m the most proud.”
