By Nisha Sampath
The growing popularity of women’s cricket is redefining conventional perceptions of femininity in beauty standards, personality attributes, strength, athleticism, nutrition and competitiveness. These shifts will eventually travel commercially, and brands that reflect them will have a clear advantage
Like millions of Indians, I started following women’s cricket after India’s World Cup victory. I’m a Women’s Premier League (WPL) regular, observing the matches, the players and the fans.
What’s unfolding isn’t just sporting evolution. Women’s cricket is quietly reshaping how India thinks about femininity, how we experience competition, how we define strength.
Because cricket is a national obsession, the impact runs deep. Cricket sits inside Indian homes, in our hearts, in our collective memory. When women cricketers consistently occupy this space, over time, our norms, beliefs and aspirations will change. And this cultural shift is something that marketers should be attuned to.
Re-defining beauty standards
Fed on a diet of mainstream cinema, we expect celebrity beauty to fit a mould; delicate, curvaceous, fair, pretty. Women’s cricket has given us celebrities whom we worship for strength, stamina, aggression, and endurance, irrespective of body types and skin tones.
As fashion brand endorsers, cricketers are spearheading change. Soon, the ripple effect will spread to other categories.
Femininity is no longer a single lane
We’ve had a limited vocabulary to describe our female icons: cute, sweet, bubbly, sexy, hot. But on the field, femininity has widened the spectrum and embraced plurality, not as the exception but as the norm. Women can also be boyish, aggressive, athletic, emotionally contained, exuberantly expressive. When the media amplifies this, young girls will register that there’s more than one legitimate way to be feminine.
Competition performed differently
Some of the most virally shared WPL moments aren’t wickets or boundaries. They’re relationships, within the Indian team and across nationalities. Jemimah Rodrigues and Smriti Mandhana are described as “frenemies” in the WPL. And the Mumbai crowd cheering for the defeated South African captain after the World Cup final.
Women’s cricket feels pioneering and close-knit. It shows that ambition and hunger to win can exist without sledging and posturing. Will this reframing of competition endure? If it does, it infuses a refreshing spirit into sports, which are mired in hyper-masculinity and ultra-nationalism.
Women’s nutrition: from shrinking to strength
One of the most far-reaching shifts lies in nutrition for women, which has been focused on weight loss or specific life stages like pregnancy and puberty. Elite sport normalises women eating for strength, not shrinking.
Expect to see conversations around women’s diets that prioritise strength, recovery and injury prevention. And crucially, equitable diets for girls and their male siblings. The first movers in sports nutrition, dairy and packaged foods will own this territory.
So many changes have been set in motion. Because cricket sits at the centre of our lives, the impact will travel far beyond the boundary rope—into our homes, our aspirations and choices.
The author is managing partner, Bright Angles Consulting.