The Making of a Legacy: India’s 1978 Women’s Cricket World Cup

#Part3 of Behind the Stats

27.02.2026

In the freezing dawn of January 1978, a handful of young Indian women stepped off a rattling train onto the platform of Eden Gardens in Calcutta. They clutched battered kit bags and geometry textbooks alike. Some were barely out of high school, others held bank clerk jobs, but all were charged with an impossible task: represent India at its first-ever Women’s Cricket World Cup. For Diana Edulji – a 22-year-old clerk with Western Railways – it felt as if her two worlds had collided. She left the railway office in Mumbai the night before, trains to catch and matches to plan, board exam notes jammed between her cricket pads. Around her, teammates from Bombay, Pune, Madras and beyond were doing the same juggling act, swapping study hours for batting practice, all while carrying their own gear from home to railway station to venue. In a country where women’s cricket was still an oddity, these players were pioneers on an adventure few truly understood yet none could refuse.

Against All Odds

The build-up to the tournament had been as makeshift as their schedules. The Women’s Cricket Association of India, a fledgling body, somehow convinced the international community to send teams to India. News reports drummed up excitement by noting India was “cricket-crazy,” but behind the scenes the reality was stark: almost no funding, hardly any equipment, and not a cent of official allowance to spend. There were no coaches in fancy tracksuits, no physiotherapists with medical bags. The women had arranged what they needed themselves. Diana Edulji, fresh from railway shifts, took on the added burden of captaincy; Shantha Rangaswamy, India’s first Test captain, was not even on the squad – a testament to how internal politics and scarce resources shaped the team. Still, when the tournament began on January 1, each of India’s players wore the national cap with pride. It might have been more curiosity than conviction from the wider world, but to the team it was validation. They had somehow found themselves on an international stage, carrying not trophies but the hopes of future generations.

Journeys on the Unreserved

There were no chartered flights or prearranged buses for this World Cup. Whenever India’s team needed to move between cities – from Calcutta to Patna to Hyderabad and Jamshedpur – they loaded themselves onto ordinary long-distance trains, all unreserved. Picture Shantha Rangaswamy, even though she wasn’t playing, at the helm of these trips: in two-minute station halts she’d haul her half-dozen suitcases onto the platform, negotiate with distracted ticket collectors, and even quell curiosity-seekers. The players themselves lay curled up by toilet corners or on lurching benches, grateful just to snag any berth. A forgotten image: a dozen women crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, gear piled overhead, sleeping bags unrolled on filthy floors as the train sped through the night. One teammate, Shobha Pandit (then unmarried), ended up nursing the World Cup trophy through a crowded coach simply because as an opener she was considered trustworthy to keep it safe. “We thought I wouldn’t fiddle with it,” she’d laugh later, and indeed, that golden cup rode along dusty corridors like a precious baby, sheltered amid sleeping cricketers.

But for all its charm, the railway journey was exhausting. No official served them hot meals or even bottled water; players rummaged for snacks at station platforms with the little money they had. When crisis hit – as it did in Patna when they realized they hadn’t been reimbursed a paisa – Diana herself drew the line. She demanded the team would refuse to play unless their travel costs were settled. It was unheard of, but the authorities panicked at the thought of cancelling a World Cup match. They scraped together the gate receipts from that very day’s game and paid the women just minutes before the match started. It was a small triumph: first-class players finally got what was theirs, if only at the eleventh hour, vindicating Diana’s quiet insistence that the game mattered as much to them as it did to anyone.

Carrying Bats and Books

Life for these cricketers was a delicate balancing act. India’s players were not seasoned athletes with sponsors and contracts; they were students and job-holders who loved sport. By day, many sat for final school exams or clerical shifts, then traded desks for nets by evening. Shubhangi “Shubhu” Kulkarni, a teenage leg-spinner, still remembered spending an exam hall session scribbling fractions and fielding positions in her mind at the same time. Her parents had initially forbade tours that clashed with her studies, but at least one board exam she tackled in the middle of a Test match series. Diana Edulji juggled the books and the bowling – returning home on holidays to find classmates puzzled that their usually studious friend was spending winter break bouncing balls instead of equations. Other girls sneaked pastries from home between batting drills or hustled books and bats into the suitcase after a morning lecture, determined not to fall behind in school or cricket. In the evenings under streetlights of budget accommodations, they sometimes pooled knowledge, revising geography alongside spells of spin. Their persistence was quiet; nobody recorded “best student” on their match scorecards, but off the field they were acing challenges few imagined existed in sports.

And this humility carried over into every aspect of the camp. There were no team managers doling out stipends; if anything needed fixing, a torn pad strap, a leaking shoe, a player like Rajeshwari Dholakia might quietly slip away to find a cobbler. If new bats or whites were scarce, sisters and neighbors shared what they could. The English opponent Megan Lear later chuckled at seeing laundry hung on river rocks by the team’s hotel: that was women’s cricket in India at the time. Diana and Shantha seldom complained in front of others, but each understood the unspoken truth: they were charting new territory and had to do it with what little they had.

Spartan Fields and Silent Stands

When they arrived at the ground, the contrasts were stark. They had dreamed of packed stadiums and supportive crowds, and Calcutta did not disappoint at first. Eden Gardens was filled to the brim (mostly with curious spectators and local children on the perimeter fence), chanting encouragement in a language foreign to these girls, giving them goosebumps as the sun rose. For a few hours, the faint noise drowned out how unready they felt. That was the good part. After the matches? Nothing. No commentary, no headlines, no celebration for records. India lost every game, bowled out cheaply, never sniffing a win. At day’s end, the team would often file out quietly, leaving a dark field and fading claps behind them. They slept in city slums rather than sports complexes, ate simple meals in curtained cafés off the roadside, and shared thin mattresses in dormitories with no hot water. There was no medal ceremony, no banquet. The cricket whites were washed in the hotel sink, often by the players themselves, or sometimes simply tossed into the river.

Yet even in these silent moments, the resolve of players like Diana and Shantha shone. After the last ball was bowled in Hyderabad’s Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium, Diana walked down to the paying counter, briefcase in hand. The Women’s Cricket Association in India had not been able to pay match fees or daily allowances; she personally collected the remaining gate cash to distribute among her teammates. Under floodlights she joked it was the strangest “evening briefing” she’d given, but to these women, every rupee counted. It did not buy fame, but it bought dignity: match expenses covered, even if it was the ground staff counting coins instead of sponsors.

Planting Seeds for Tomorrow

Looking back, none of these pioneers blinked over their defeats. In fact, not a single match result could dim the knowledge that they had done something monumental. Five years earlier there were only 200 spectators at a women’s game; in 1978, over a thousand would show up per match, astonishing anyone who remembered the beginnings. India had led the world in hosting a World Cup, the first ever cricket World Cup was for women in 1973, and now a couple of years before India’s men played at home, India’s women had paved the way in 1978. These players would go home from Patna and Hyderabad with empty trophy cases but full hearts: they had proved they belonged.

The groundwork was laid. A quiet revolution had begun. Shantha Rangaswamy, though not playing that day, stood on airwaves as a commentator, loudly defending the players’ rights off-field. She famously declared that the team deserved respect, not patronizing pity: “We are not small children, we are putting this game on the map,” she told anyone who would listen. These words became a rallying cry. Over the next decade, those who stayed, Diana and the girls of ’78, kept fighting for opportunities, slowly pushing for tours and matches. Mahendra Sharma, the man who first kick-started women’s cricket, had arranged meet-and-greets with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid-70s, giving the team its first taste of recognition. In 1978 they returned to more ground realities, but even that contact in Delhi mattered. It was the spark, soon Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami and other younger talents would carry the torch, inspired by stories of “those railway girls” who gave it their all with no fanfare.

Forty-Seven Years Later

In 1978, India hosted a Women’s World Cup and returned home without a win. The stands were curious, not convinced. The players travelled unreserved. They collected gate money to cover expenses. They washed their own whites in hotel sinks.

In 2025, India hosted a Women’s World Cup again.

This time, the stadiums were sold out before the first ball was bowled. This time, there were contracts, cameras, sponsorship deals, prime-time broadcasts. This time, when the final ended, it ended with India lifting the trophy on home soil.

The gap between those two moments is forty-seven years.

But the distance is measured in something else.

It is measured in train tickets without berths.In exam papers revised under dim hostel lights. In railway salaries stretched to cover cricket dreams. In women who were told the game was not meant for them; and played anyway.

When Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur stood under floodlights in 2025, they stood where Diana Edulji and Shantha Rangaswamy once stood, only louder, brighter, and finally heard.

The 1978 team did not lift a trophy. But they built the stage. And when India lifted its first Women’s World Cup at home, it was not just a victory for one squad. It was the echo of a rattling train pulling into Eden Gardens in the winter of 1978.