Online Violence Against Women in Cricket Media: The Hearing That Never Gets Called

In 2026, in the Wankhede press box, I did a small piece of arithmetic. India versus England in an ODI. England won by five runs, Andrew Flintoff ran across the outfield twirling his shirt, and the senior journalist seated behind me shut her laptop and asked, "Which page runs the shirt-waving story tomorrow?" My arithmetic wasn't about the shirt. I was counting the women in that box. The answer was two.

Months later, Sourav Ganguly twirled his shirt from the Lord's balcony and it became one of the most reproduced images in Indian cricket. At the time we all called it a story about revenge. Now it reads like a story about who is permitted to speak beyond the boundary rope, and who is expected to stay quiet.

In recent days I have read a piece that begins in that same Wankhede box and ends in a screenshot at three in the morning. A senior cricket journalist has written about how the profession changed, over two decades, into a place where she receives abuse — sexualised insults, racial language, accusations of treason and a direct threat of physical violence. I have not independently verified the original publication or the author's identity; my analysis rests on the sequence of the material that is publicly available. The question remains the one I ask after every disputed decision: when an appeal is filed, where is the hearing held?

Cricket has an entire machinery for the first question and none for the second. If a player screams at an umpire, a match referee writes a report, a clause of the code of conduct is invoked, a fine is levied, and the reasoning is published. If a journalist finds a rape threat under her post, what happens? A block button, a screenshot, and the same show the next morning. The room keeps arguing, and there is no referee in the room.

I learned to hear the whistle twice: once in the stadium, once in the corridor. I have borrowed that line from football and I am using it exactly once, deliberately, because this is not a story about a whistle. It is a story about a record. In cricket's own vocabulary, there is no soft signal here, no umpire's call, no third umpire. And where there is no review, how does one even debate the review system?

Context: from press box to reel

The journalist at the centre of this has a record that needs no introduction. The 2026 World Cup, the 2026-08 Australia tour that produced Monkeygate, the 2026 T20 World Cup, the 2026 World Cup. She interviewed Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne and Brian Lara, served as cricket editor at NDTV 24x7, and later returned to cricket coverage through a digital platform, The Scoop.

That record does not make her complaint unanswerable. It means the complainant is not a newcomer whom social media suddenly upset. When someone speaks after two decades of work about a changed environment, that testimony deserves the seriousness we extend to a senior umpire's report.

Three dates explain what changed. First, the era when women in the press contingent could be counted on one hand and professional isolation was a cold, daily inconvenience — an inconvenience that stayed inside the room and did not follow anyone home. Second, 2026, when she wrote about IPL cheerleading culture — the male gaze, the fetishisation of white skin, the habit of treating women as decoration — and the column went viral, but the argument that followed was about her motives rather than her reasoning. Third, now, when a large share of cricket coverage travels through Instagram and TikTok reels, where one-to-three-minute cuts of longer shows are manufactured and impressions decide who gets booked next.

Place those three dates in a line and the pattern is clear: the prejudice is old; only its delivery system is new. It used to appear on the interview list. It now appears in the comment list. It used to be endured; it now has to be read. That difference matters, because what is endured ends at nightfall, and what is read stays on the screen.

Core: four angles on the replay

Angle one — the difference between 2026 and today is scale, not argument. The reaction to the cheerleading column was angry but personal: jealousy, a feminist label, and little else. The environment described now has changed in kind: sexualised commentary, attacks on race, the treason stamp, and threats of violence. That is not the evolution of anger; it is the institutionalisation of it. A few people used to shout. Now the shouters behave like a crowd that believes it is representing the team.

Angle two — impressions are a soft signal, and editors are treating them as the third umpire. The person cutting the reel has an easy job: take the most quotable sentence, strip the context, publish. The trouble is that when context is cut, the argument is not cut — only its defence is. The viewer did not hear the debate; the viewer saw its sharpest fragment and delivered a verdict on it. In cricket we call that a bad review. In media we call it engagement.

Angle three — the Gavaskar episode: turning criticism of an argument into an attack on identity. The article refers to Sunil Gavaskar's reported remark that buying Pakistani players for Indian-owned Hundred teams is indirectly akin to contributing to the deaths of Indian soldiers and civilians. Abrar Ahmed's selection by Sunrisers Leeds was dragged into the same argument. The journalist challenged the reasoning. What followed was not reasoning.

Let me be precise: I have not independently verified Gavaskar's exact wording, and criticism here belongs to the argument — that citizenship and ethnicity can be used to justify or condemn a franchise signing — not to the man. But the moment criticism of a journalist's argument becomes "who do you think you are," the debate has not ended; something else has begun in its place. Cricket has a match referee for such moments. Here there was none.

Angle four — cricket has a tribunal; cricket coverage has nothing. This is the least discussed and most important part of the story. A player pays a fine for a slow over rate, a clause of the code of conduct appears in the report, and the finding is published. What is the process when a commentator or reporter is abused? There isn't one. An industry that built a three-tier appeals system for its players, umpires and match officials has built a blocklist and a vaguely worded statement for the people who cover it.

The practical consequence is that the burden of safety shifts onto the person already under attack. The journalist collects the screenshots, escalates them, and decides alone whether a threat is "serious." The camera gives you the foul; the liaison desk gives you the context. Here there is neither camera nor desk.

Contrarian: visibility is not protection

Now the point on which few will agree with me and on which I have the most confidence. Female presence in Indian cricket broadcasting has grown sharply over the last decade, and we treated that as a victory. The bitter lesson of this account is that being seen and being safe are two different things, and we have been treating the first as the second. When a camera puts you in every living room, it also brings every living room's anger to you. Visibility is a career opportunity and, at the same time, a tax that no contract itemises.

The second thing that troubles me is the vocabulary of protection. Whenever such an incident surfaces, the response is: "It is our duty to protect women journalists." I do not doubt the intention; I doubt the architecture. Protection, in practice, often means taking someone off the air, steering them away from contentious subjects — removing editorial freedom in the name of safeguarding it. What is actually being asked for is not protection but parity of process.

Here a distinction must be recorded. Male commentators are abused too, usually for their opinions and their perceived loyalties. What women commentators receive is less about their opinions and more about their bodies, their skin, their sexuality and their Indianness. That is a difference in kind, not degree, and it has to be measured.

Third, something nobody enjoys hearing. The platforms on which the abuse arrives also profit from the presence — clicks, arguments, audiences. Institutions are old: invite the anger, hand the journalist a blocklist the next day, and post a statement underneath. A fair ruling is only half the job; the other half is helping people live with it. The other half is not being done.

And I must accept a fourth objection, aimed at my own trade. Our first instinct after every such episode is "get these accounts shut down." The emotion is right; the process is wrong. The day we properly preserve evidence, log the incident, and record response times, we will build real accountability. Until then we are playing another round of the argument.

Takeaway: what to watch next

After thirty years, I trust the rulebook less as a weapon and more as a map. The map says the next argument should not be about how "controversial" a journalist's writing was, but about who answers after she speaks. I will watch whether broadcasters and publishers write threat-escalation timelines into commentator contracts; whether a public incident register exists, recording how many threats arrived in a week and how many were acted upon; whether moderation response windows are fixed. None of it photographs well. All of it could close the gap between the newsroom and the field.

Russia 2026 taught me that a decision is not final until the room stops arguing. The room is arguing. There is no official in it. And I have a question of my own that I cannot answer: when the next reel goes viral, will we hold a hearing for what was edited out — or will we do what we have done for two decades, print the shirt-waving photograph and skip the comments?