Sisters of Courage: How Shaiza and Sharmeen Khan Willed Pakistan Women’s Cricket Into Existence

19.09.2025

#Part2 of Outside the Stats

First, imagine a national game played in near silence.

Karachi. The night before a women’s match, police stand outside two sisters’ home. Morning comes and the stadium is ringed with thousands of officers. Spectators aren’t allowed in. The players walk out anyway. They play anyway. When the last ball is bowled, the sisters board a plane and leave the country for their own safety.

It almost sounds like fiction. It wasn’t.

The spark at Lord’s

A few years earlier, two students, Shaiza and Sharmeen Khan, sat in the stands at Lord’s for the 1993 Women’s World Cup final and asked the simplest, loudest question: Why not Pakistan? On the flight back to Karachi they made a pact. By the next World Cup, there would be a Pakistan women’s team on the field.

They went home and got to work. Phone calls. Letters. Meetings that began with polite smiles and ended with closed doors. They registered the Pakistan Women’s Cricket Control Association and pushed through the paperwork that would make a women’s side real, not just a rumor. Then came the hunt for players: newspaper ads, word of mouth, talent spotted in parks and university grounds. A teenager named Kiran Baluch walked in for trials, batted as if she’d been waiting for this day all her life, and stayed.

The idea wasn’t to shock the world with instant wins. The idea was to exist. To put “Pakistan Women” on a fixture list that had never carried that name.

Locked doors, loud threats

Building a team is one thing; letting it exist in public is another. The pushback was swift and loud. Conservative groups challenged their right to play. Court petitions appeared. Threats arrived. The matchday with 8,000 police and zero spectators became a shorthand for the absurdity of it all: a sport that lives on crowds forced to breathe in an empty ground. The sisters got through it, then flew out of Pakistan that same day, because staying a moment longer felt unsafe.

Even basic logistics became battlegrounds. Which grounds would they be allowed to use? Who would umpire? Who would coach? An older, unrecognised local association insisted it should lead the project and tried to block access. Doors closed, so the sisters tried windows. They found allies in government offices and in a few brave administrators who were willing to sign a travel paper or lend a pitch. They found a coach, Jodie Davis from Australia, who saw what this team could become if it was simply allowed to exist, and said yes.

Three games to open a door

Recognition came with conditions: play internationals before the World Cup. So, in early 1997, a brand-new Pakistan squad flew to New Zealand and Australia to play three ODIs. They were outplayed. Of course, they were. Some had barely worn a national shirt before stepping into the toss. But those three matches did what they needed to do. They turned a promise into a pathway. Now “Pakistan” could appear on the World Cup board without anyone saying it didn’t count.

Behind the scenes the to-do list never ended. Kit had to be paid for. Practice time had to be negotiated. Media had to be persuaded to show up for something many thought shouldn’t exist. The sisters spent more time in offices than any cricketer dreams of. They kept smiling and kept asking. Sometimes that’s how doors open: not with a trumpet blast, but with the hundredth knock.

Names on a list

On the eve of the 1997 Women’s World Cup in India, a new obstacle appeared. The team’s names had been placed on the Exit Control List, the database used to stop people leaving the country. It should have ended the journey. Instead, the team took a chance on the cracks in a clumsy system and headed to the airport anyway. They made it out. They made it to the tournament. That single detail tells you everything about the era: a national side tiptoeing past its own borders just to play the game.

India, December 1997

The results were heavy. The learning curve was steeper. And yet there it was on the big screen: PAKISTAN. The flag was on the field. For girls watching in Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, and beyond, the sight mattered more than any margin of defeat. You can’t dream of a jersey you never see.

What it cost

All of this ran on nerve and family steel. Legal petitions were met and answered. Training sessions were scheduled at odd hours to avoid attention. A player begged her parents for permission and staged a hunger strike to prove she meant it. Another walked half the way to a bus because she didn’t have taxi money for the ride to a team meeting. Coaches were borrowed, grounds were borrowed, time was borrowed. The only thing that wasn’t borrowed was belief.

And then there was the personal toll. The threats that changed how the sisters lived. The nights with police at the gate. The weeks spent abroad because home didn’t feel safe. It’s easy to say “pioneers” as if it’s a title you’re handed. It’s not. It’s a bill you pay.

After the first steps

From those closed gates came a national side that now plays World Cups, Asia Cups, and Tests. The scorebooks will tell you that Kiran Baluch once made 242 in a Test, that Shaiza Khan spun teams into knots, that Pakistan learned quickly and fought hard. The scorebooks won’t tell you about the classifieds that brought players to a dusty trial, or the coach who bought her own ticket because she believed in a story still being written, or the government official who stamped a document that needed to be stamped that day and not a day later.

In 2018, Sharmeen Khan passed away. The tributes weren’t light on praise, but the most honest words were the simplest: thank you. Thank you for taking the blows so the rest of us could pick up a bat without asking permission.

Why this story matters now

You can watch women’s cricket today and see packed stands, broadcast deals, and superstar names. You can also talk to players from Associate Nations and hear a familiar rhythm—part-time contracts, side jobs, last-minute fundraising, a parent who still isn’t sure this is a “real” career. Different countries, same questions: How do you keep going when the bills don’t care about your cover drive? Who opens the gate when the gatekeeper says no?

That’s why the Khan sisters’ story matters. It’s a reminder that progress isn’t neat. It’s the match with no crowd and the flight booked for the same night. It’s the office door you knock on for the 101st time. It’s a World Cup reached not on talent alone, but on patience, courage, and the kind of stubborn hope that makes space for everyone who comes after.

The young girls coming through now get to play more freely because someone else took the heat. We can celebrate that and still say there’s distance to cover. Both things can be true. And if you’re looking for a reason to keep pushing at a board meeting, in a selection room, or on a training ground, start here: two sisters watched a match at Lord’s, went home to Karachi, and built a team out of thin air. You’re holding the harvest of that work every time you see a girl pick up a bat without asking if she’s allowed.