Why the Women’s World Cup matters to us – and to you!

The ICC Women’s World Cup 2025 kicked off on 30 September, and after more than a month of action across the two host countries – India and Sri Lanka – will end with the final in Navi Mumbai this Sunday, 2 November. India, the last Southasian team standing, will play a semi-final on Thursday night, against Australia, hoping to keep alive the dream of a World Cup win on home soil. If that dream is fulfilled, it could be a massive moment for Indian (and Southasian) cricket – perhaps its biggest moment in over 50 years.

My guess is this is all news for you. If this was a men’s World Cup – especially a men’s World Cup hosted in Southasia – the Subcontinent would be awash in coverage of it. Even if you want nothing to do with cricket, there’s no way you wouldn’t know about it. But with the women’s game things are different. But I’m not here to repeat that familiar lament of how women’s sports doesn’t get anywhere near the coverage it deserves. I’m here to tell you that we are giving it the coverage it deserves – and doing it in that Southasian way that only Himal can.

Long before the tournament started, we reached out to writers in India and Sri Lanka, the two co-hosts. We worked with Tanushree Bhasin to tell the story of how a World Cup win for India now has the potential to finally put women’s cricket at the centre of the country’s sporting culture, alongside the men’s game, and give girls the same freedom to play cricket on the streets that Indian boys have long taken for granted. And we worked with  Estelle Vasudevan to tell the story of her journey as one of Sri Lanka’s few women  sports journalists, which has proceeded in parallel with the difficult journey of women’s cricket in Sri Lanka. Estelle wrote her Himal piece even as she covered World Cup matches live as a commentator. 

For the State of Southasia podcast, we invited the veteran sports journalist Sharda Ugra to reflect on why the Women’s World Cup has not been marketed more widely, how televising women’s matches has made a big difference, and how support for the women’s game was often tied to performances, without long-term institutional and fan support to help it improve and grow.

This is what we do at Himal: we tell Southasian stories that need to be told but that others aren’t telling. And for us to keep doing it, we need your financial support to keep the magazine independent and thriving. Our future depends on our readers becoming paying Himal Patrons so we can keep working for you and only you, without depending on or answering to any government or corporate interests. 

As a Sri Lankan, I’ve often heard about how everyone remembers where they were in 1996, when the Sri Lanka men’s team won the Cricket World Cup. I don’t remember ever seeing similar excitement for the women’s game. But I’ve seen Sri Lankan fans grow more interested in women’s cricket recently – even if that’s often out of frustration with the men’s side doing badly. It’s time to change this story and really bring women athletes into the Southasian public mind. 

Even with Sri Lanka sadly out of the World Cup, I’ll be tuning in to watch the rest of the tournament and support the women playing Southasia’s favourite game. I hope you’ll join in, wherever you are, and know that many others in the Himal community, all over the region and the world, are doing the same.

Raisa