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“All of us should be indebted to her for taking that initiative.”

For decades, women’s cricket in India was played in pockets around the vast nation without a well-defined structure. The Women’s Cricket Association of India, founded in 1973, changed that to some extent, but there was still no money in the sport – certainly not enough for anyone to turn professional.

India women played their first Test matches against the West Indies, in 1975-76. Debuting in the first game was Diana Edulji, whose father had been an employee of Western Railways. Playing with the local boys – mostly children of Railways employees – had not only sparked her interest in sports but had also kept her “connected to the Railways family”.

Railways minister Kamalapati Tripathi attended the third Test of that West Indies series, at Delhi. His daughter-in-law Chandra Tripathi was the WCAI president at that point. Edulji walked up to him during the match with a simple request: her father was set to retire that same year, and she wanted a job with Railways. Edulji thus became the first female cricketer to be employed by Indian Railways under their sports quota. She did not have to worry about her livelihood anymore. She could solely...