Written by a Malayali, validated by 'The Cricketer': Kerala's historic women's cricket roots

Kochi: Do you recall the story of an Australian woman who arrived in Kerala for missionary work and planted the early roots of women's cricket here? These were the opening lines of an article published in ‘The Cricketer’ magazine while the Indian women's team was playing a historic Test match against England at the Lord's Cricket Ground.

As ‘The Cricketer’ recognised Kerala as the land that laid the pitch for women's cricket in India for the first time, that piece of writing too carries a distinct Malayali touch.

It was written by R Vishnukumar, a native of Thiruvananthapuram who has been living in Indonesia for over 30 years, putting Kerala's name firmly on the map of world cricket.

Vishnu's article featured in the August issue of ‘The Cricketer’, the world's oldest and largest-selling English cricket magazine. Gwen Kellaway, an Australian missionary, arrived in Kerala in 1912. During her tenure as a teacher at Buchanan Institution Girls High School and Baker Memorial Higher Secondary School in Kottayam, she pioneered women's cricket in the state. She assembled two women's teams comprising girls from schools and colleges. To get the players onto the pitch, she specially imported white cricket cloth from England to stitch trousers and t-shirts for the women.

The Women's Cricket Association of India was formed in 1978, and India officially played its first international Test match in 1976. In ‘The Cricketer’, Vishnu narrated the story of women playing cricket in Kerala 60 years prior to those milestones.

A native of Thiruvananthapuram, Vishnukumar moved to Indonesia after pursuing his MBA in Australia. He is currently serving as the vice president of Marketing at a petrochemical firm in Jakarta. He used to play cricket ever since he arrived there and later transitioned into cricket administration.

Eventually, he went on to become the chairman of both the Jakarta Cricket Association and the Indonesian Cricket Association. He boasts a personal collection of over 750 books on cricket across various international languages, alongside rare cricket memorabilia.