Mahendra Kumar Sharma, who performed a number one position within the growth of ladies’s cricket in India within the Nineteen Seventies, handed away in Pune after battling age-related issues.
He breathed his final on Tuesday. He was 74 years outdated. Former India captain Shubhangi Kulkarni confirmed the demise of Sharma, who had beforehand been the founding secretary of the Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI) for 5 years.
“Her contribution to girls’s cricket is big. He registered the WCAI when he was 20 years outdated and inside just a few years the primary worldwide match within the nation was held in 1975 when Australia toured right here,” Kulkarni told PTI. “India’s Australia and New Zealand It was unprecedented what he was capable of obtain in five-six years. Sometimes he needed to ask his father for cash to run the affiliation and typically even borrow.
When girls’s cricket lastly got here underneath the umbrella of BCCI in 2006, she was the happiest particular person. Sharma is without doubt one of the primary causes behind the existence of ladies’s cricket as she registered the WCAI underneath the Societies Act in Lucknow in 1973.
While the BCCI took over girls’s cricket in 2006, it was underneath Sharma’s cost that India hosted its first Women’s World Cup in 1978. India later hosted one other version in 1997 when England confronted Australia within the closing on the Eden Gardens. Sharma was additionally instrumental within the Indian girls enjoying their first Test in Bengaluru in 1976.
With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
