Kadambari Murali To Peya Jennatul, Meet The Best Women Sport Journalists of South Asia

News networks spend a significant amount of airtime broadcasting sports news, and every daily magazine has a sports section. People simply do not read about sports in India, despite the fact that this topic has a large global audience. This highlights the significance of sports journalism in India as well as how quickly this field of journalism is developing.

Sports play a significant role in human lifestyle since they mould a person's personality and character. Each of us enjoyed playing sports when we were young. Later in life, some people choose to make a career out of it. On the other side, sports journalists are individuals who pursue a career combining both journalism and sports.

Women Sports Journalists In India

With thousands of sportsmen competing in sports all around the world, the general public's interest in sports is growing daily. In a field which is predominantly male-centric, we have curated a list of women sports journalists who equally write about sports like poetry, understanding that game and presenting it in a way which is as appealing as it is precise and appropriate. 

Manuja Veerappa

Wanting to become a journalist even before she could spell the word, Manuja realised that sport was her chosen field. Being a national-level hockey player, her way of staying connected with sports helped her inculcate values like ethics, discipline and teamwork. She started off her career with a newspaper called Vijay Times (now Bangalore Mirror) in 2003. Since December 2015, Manuja has been working with Times Of India as an assistant editor in Sports, covering cricket and hockey as her primary beats. Speaking to SheThePeople, she says, “The emergence of other platforms, especially digital, has seen a growth in the number of women taking up sports journalism,” adding, “We need more of them to follow their passion and make sport their profession.” In her opinion, a sportswriter’s life can get lonely because they are still working after most others have called it a day. “But what keeps us going is the adrenaline rush of being on the same field and doing what we love each day,” Manuja says.

Kadambari Murali

Former editor-in-chief of Sports Illustrated India, Kadambari Murali Wade was the sole female to occupy the post at Hindustan Times. She started contributing to Sports Illustrated India in 2011 and started writing about cricket for the magazine's monthly issue. As the recipient of the 2006 and 2007 Cricket Writers Awards from the Sports Journalist Federation of India, Kadambari has served as India's national editor for the longest period of time. She is also known for being the first to report about the BCCI's plans to launch the cricket-specific Indian Premier League.

Zainab Abbas

Abbas, a native of Lahore, worked as a makeup artist with her own studio until 2015, when she won an audition to join former national team players Saeed Ajmal and Imran Nazir as guests on a show on Dunya News for the 2015 Cricket World Cup, launching her career as a cricket presenter and commentator. Later, she travelled to England as a correspondent for Dunya News to cover the 2016 trip of the Pakistan national cricket team. She made a cameo appearance on the BBC's Test Match Special there. She got a full-time contract after her return to host her own programme, Cricket Dewangi, on Dunya News, which she conducted from 2016 to 2018.

Zainab Abbas

Mayanti Langer

India's Star Sports network employs Mayanti Langer as a journalist. The 2011 Cricket World Cup, the 2014 Indian Super League, the 2019 Indian Premier League, the 2019 Cricket World Cup, the 2018 Indian Premier League, the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which was broadcast on ESPN, the 2015 ICC World Cup, and the Football Café on Zee Sports are just a few of the competitions that Mayanti has hosted. In 2010, she and Charu Sharma co-hosted the Commonwealth Games.

Sharda Ugra

Sharda Ugra is a senior sports editor at ESPN CricInfo who has been writing about sports for about 23 years. She entered the field sometime in the 1980s when no one would have ventured to imagine a woman discussing sports, and she dared to dream, choosing to pursue journalism with a primary focus on sports. She remembers playing a lot of games but never really excelling in any of them. She made the decision to continue writing because she had a flair for writing and journalism. 

Peya Jennatul

Peya is the first Bangladeshi woman to appear on the cover of Vogue India. Peya said that Deepika Padukone serves as her inspiration and that she aspires to take her career global like Deepika while discussing her own experiences. She not only had a successful modelling career but she also hosted cricket matches in the 2017 BPL.  She appeared on the GTV screen for the BPL 2018 for the second time as the host. Because of the overwhelming response to her two seasons of hosting the BPL, she received an invitation to serve as a presenter for the ICC 2019 Cricket World Cup. She is the first Bangladeshi to serve as an ICC World Cup presenter.

Peya Jennautal

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