What ought to a cricketer ideally appear like?
It’s a query that governs a lot fan engagement surrounding the sport globally. India is not any totally different. With the ladies’s recreation, which has boomed in India during the last decade, a big a part of informal curiosity has a lot to do with the way in which gamers look first earlier than the dialogue of any abilities come up.
To be truthful, the obsession with appears is just not gender particular, as is absolutely the rejection of something that appears totally different from athletic. Former India captain Rohit Sharma has handled loads of unsavoury feedback round his weight. Greater-built gamers like Rakheem Cornwall, for instance, have all the time discovered their cricketing prowess spoken about by way of the quantity on a scale.
South African-turned-Australian keeper-batter Lizelle Lee’s profession has been considered by means of this lens for its entirety. Her commendable reflexes with the gloves or her unbelievable bat swing usually are not the rapid dialog starters when discussing this explosive opener’s cricketing resume.
In 2022, Lee was one half of a promising Protean opening salvo, the brash big-hitting foil to a younger Laura Wolvaardt’s refined textbook strokeplay. She rapidly stacked up runs for the Rainbow Nation, changing into its erstwhile top-scorer in white ball cricket, however the scrutiny over her weight pushed her to a shock retirement in 2022.
“I do know I don’t appear like an athlete, however that doesn’t imply I can’t do my job,” she instructed the BBC in a revelatory interview shortly after.
Drafted in by the Delhi Capitals for the Girls’s Premier League’s 2026 version, Lee’s presence triggered comparable debates with unsavoury comparisons casually thrown round on-line.
“Folks all over the world don’t all the time see your struggles. They solely see what you appear like, however they don’t see the work you’re placing behind all of the struggles. They don’t perceive how a lot informal judgement impacts one’s psychological well being,” Lee instructed Sportstar.
Lee’s retirement and subsequent transfer to Australia left her colleagues and followers surprised, particularly at a time when it appeared like she was peaking, successful an ICC Cricketer of the Yr honour in 2021. A fractured relationship along with her residence board ultimately revealed itself, regardless of a joint assertion launched by the 2 events to deal with the rising whispers on the proper and improper of South Africa’s health clearance metrics.
“The decision blindsided me, too,” Lee chuckled. “I didn’t retire to prioritise different alternatives. Retirement made me actively search different alternatives out,” she mentioned, addressing a standard allegation that she picked the franchise map over nationwide colors.
“A number of issues occurred behind the scenes. I had a whole lot of baggage with how all the things was about how I appeared. I remorse sending out the assertion with the CSA, as a result of it made them look good in a way, after I by no means felt supported by them. There are a whole lot of issues I remorse round my retirement, however I don’t remorse retiring. I couldn’t have been in a greater place. My psychological well being would have gone down the drain if I had stayed in that crew, so issues turned out for the higher for me.”
Lizelle Lee was the all-time high scorer for South Africa when she introduced a shock retirement in 2022.
| Photograph Credit score:
Vijay Soneji
Lizelle Lee was the all-time high scorer for South Africa when she introduced a shock retirement in 2022.
| Photograph Credit score:
Vijay Soneji
Her colleague and shut pal, Dane van Niekerk, who was additionally infamously dropped from the facet for failing a health check by seconds, and has copped a whole lot of flak for her fluctuating weight, is one in all many individuals who’ve discovered solace in Lee’s adamance to have company over her decisions. It helps that she is being offered assets to take care of the problems surrounding her physique picture by Cricket Tasmania, her residence board in Hobart.
The 33-year-old mother or father of two, nonetheless, hopes she will be able to discover the power to make use of her platform to advocate higher for talent over measurement.
“I ought to truly do a bit extra, however I feel I’ve to face my demons first. And as quickly as I really feel snug with the way in which I look, which hopefully occurs, I can then truly assist different individuals.”
Alongside the body-shaming, one additionally spots the odd, informal misgendering. Lee’s androgynous model and brief trim, and her sexuality usually entice some merciless jeers, even for her gender. Few perceive the vitriol and dismissal these postulations carry greater than Gujarat Giants pinch hitter Bharti Fulmali.
The feedback part of her Instagram profile is crammed with individuals questioning her gender, calling for testosterone checks and slamming her for ‘attempting to infiltrate the ladies’s recreation being a person’. There may be additionally a backyard number of trans slurs hurled at her, with none foundation to take action.
When this publication requested Bharti concerning the trolling she confronted, part of her didn’t perceive the questions posed, and one other had made peace with it. Her experiences now are in stark distinction to her life rising up in a women’ college, being one in all three sisters at residence pursuing cricket when alternatives had been few and much between.
“Once I performed within the streets, the boys round me additionally performed alongside. My neighbours didn’t prefer it when the boys performed with me. In the event that they noticed me, they’d name their children again and inform them to not play with women. The mindset was that ladkiyan sirf ghar ghar khelti thi [Girls only play house] . They didn’t need their children to be influenced by such video games. However I continued to play,” Bharti instructed Sportstar.
Few perceive the vitriol and dismissal of informal misgendering as a lot as Gujarat Giants pinch-hitter Bharti Fulmali.
| Photograph Credit score:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Few perceive the vitriol and dismissal of informal misgendering as a lot as Gujarat Giants pinch-hitter Bharti Fulmali.
| Photograph Credit score:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“Whereas taking part in cricket, I smashed the ball, and it hit somebody’s bike mirror. The minute that occurred, I fled the scene, as did the opposite children. The proprietor of the bike noticed solely the boys run, caught one in all them and took them to process. That point, he pleaded that it wasn’t his fault however mine. The bike’s proprietor dismissed the response and mentioned, ‘ Ladkiyan thodi mar sakti hain aise. Tu jhoot bol raha hai [Girls can’t hit the ball like this. You are lying].’ My household and I then went and sorted out the matter and made it clear that women can also play this sport,” she remembered.
Very similar to Lee, Bharti sports activities brief hair and prefers clothes that’s ‘masculine’. Fairly a number of athletes do. Bharti, too, remembers taking the decision to maintain her brief when she noticed seniors who sported the hairdo.
“I by no means considered reducing my hair. However my seniors had shorter hair, which is what tempted me to strive. I had lengthy hair until the first yr of school. I felt unhealthy whereas reducing, however the change felt good too. I attempted it and favored it and it has caught,” she mentioned, adjusting her hair again.
“Folks’s job is to be in others’ enterprise. They inform my mother always why she’s elevating her woman to appear like a boy. My mom ignores all the things and provides it again when vital. She all the time tells people who I’m standing by myself two ft and that I’ve a proper to stay the way in which I would like. It’s come to some extent the place the neighbours don’t discuss anymore. I can’t management social media. I don’t give house to individuals who don’t exist in my life or influence how my life goes.”
However the narrative has sadly modified. Her personal wrestle of spending hours practising with a ball tied to a tree, of her father — a instructor of English and science in Amravati — uncompromisingly supporting her early cricketing profession, of her makes an attempt to transform her sisters to cricket nuts, how she discovered her ft within the Vidarbha outfit and her latest recall to the Indian T20I setup fades away a little bit in entrance of the “ yeh ladka hai kya” [Is this a man] jibe.
RELATED | Go for the cheese, not the cat: How Grace Harris formed RCB’s opening blueprint in WPL 2026
Nobody escapes this and the pendulum does swing the opposite approach as properly. England pacer Lauren Bell had a season to recollect in a victorious marketing campaign with Royal Challengers Bengaluru, however a easy internet search of the lanky bowler will reveal movies and numerous feedback on her physique, a worrying quantity of them sexually suggestive. Ellyse Perry’s accounts have been subjected to this, as has captain Smriti Mandhana. The latter additionally skilled how Indian audiences nonetheless wrestle with athletic physique varieties in girls in sport when her biceps had been trolled for being too manly, social media likening her to Bollywood actor Salman Khan’s look within the 2006 Hindi movie Jaan-E-Man. Her teammate and pal Jemimah Rodrigues’ Instagram story congratulating Smriti crossing 4000 T20I runs had a sly retort to the trolls – “She’s my sister! Additionally, loopy biceps.” Help apart, it solely proves that gamers, nonetheless huge or small, see, hear and skim all the things!
In recent times, franchises, tournaments and boards have opened as much as the realities of on-line abuse, fetishisation and the influence they’ll have on participant well being, psychological and bodily.
Gujarat Giants refreshingly dragged all of the disturbing feedback headed Bharti’s approach and addressed them with a chat that includes the participant. In a video posted by the franchise, Bharti says, “I really feel very unhealthy when individuals query your appears and persona. I wish to know what individuals say about me, identical to anybody else however then I’m going to the feedback part and see a lot hate. I talked to my teammates about it and noticed that in addition they undergo it. It’s regular now.”
However ought to or not it’s? And what are leagues just like the WPL doing about it? These usually are not remoted incidents to the league, to India and even cricket.
The WPL and the BCCI don’t have any guardrails in place; most cricketing leagues don’t. However boards like Cricket Australia and the England and Wales Cricket Board have protocols in place to make sure protected bodily and digital areas for individuals throughout all varieties and age ranges of cricket. Integrity or safeguarding officers have been appointed to be level individuals for aggrieved gamers to hunt help from.
The ICC took a shot at heightened social media safety when it partnered with on-line security expertise agency GoBubble forward of the 2024 Girls’s T20 World Cup. This system mixed synthetic intelligence with human moderation to detect and mute poisonous or abusive feedback throughout ICC platforms, groups and participant accounts. Information from the event revealed that greater than 8 million social media feedback from the coated pool had been scanned, of which 29 per cent had been recognized as abusive, hateful or spam — an alarming actuality test on how widespread on-line abuse actually is in sport.
This corroborates what a four-year examine by World Athletics proved, the place it was discovered that 60 per cent of verified on-line abuse throughout main tournaments was directed at girls, with a good portion being sexist or sexual in nature.
Outdoors cricket, the Girls’s Tennis Affiliation and the Worldwide Olympic Committee are taking the lead on shielding sportspersons from caustic digital interactions. The WTA, in partnership with the Worldwide Tennis Federation (ITF), the All England Garden Tennis Membership (AELTC), and the US Tennis Affiliation (USTA), launched a proactive monitoring service referred to as Risk Matrix in 2024.
Developed by AI firm Signify Group and supported by the investigations crew at Quest and the fixated menace specialists, Theseus Threat Administration— the Risk Matrix would monitor gamers’ public-facing social media for abusive and threatening content material on X (previously Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, Fb and TikTok. Help for these impacted by abuse was additionally offered.
Lee says, “It doesn’t matter how I look so long as I’m match sufficient for video games and I rating runs, that’s all that issues.” However perhaps it’s time for methods to grasp that, no matter efficiency, gamers matter extra.
Revealed on Feb 10, 2026