While International Women's Day is marked this March, the likes of Sania Mirza, Mary Kom, Sania Nehwal, and Dipa Karmakar have proved again last year that sports can inspire us like nothing else - no matter what the gender of the athlete is.
While we haven't quite warmed up to ice hockey, a team of 19 women is ready to battle the odds at the IIHF Ice Hockey Challenge Cup of Asia, 2016.
Lack of facilities and multiple other challenges, however, did not deter the morale of the aspiring women of the Indian National Ice Hockey team to represent the country in an international tournament to be held in Chinese Taipei this month.
Most of the Indian hockey team (Read: ice and not field) are from Ladakh, an area in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Hockey is played during winter on frozen lakes before the ice begins to melt.
The game was introduced by the British in Shimla in the pre-independence era but the sport has come a long way in India. It has grown tremendously in the last three decades.
'I first saw my dad playing ice-hockey in Ladakh just for fun. After 3-4 years of practice, I started to grow an interest back then. Girls started to play ice-hockey in Ladakh since 2005,' says captain Rinchen Dolma in an exclusive interview with Sportskeeda.
‘Girls have skipped board exams to play’
But, in spite of being a national sport, the squad is struggling to win the hearts of Indian fans.
"If you want to compare girls and boys in this sport, there is no major difference. It's just that they have gone abroad and represented the nation which we have failed at times because of the lack of funding," says Dolma.
Sadly, what movies like Mary Kom and Chak De India portrayed on-screen happens to be the real-life scenario of the lesser-known and lesser-followed sports in India.
Such questions and many more are most often lost between the star-studded cricket tournaments in India and the inconclusive panel debates at news channels.
"There are girls in our team who have skipped their board exams just to be a part of the team. So, this tournament is very important for us," shared Dolma.
Hopefully, fund crunch will not melt this team's hopes
'As per as the rules to get government funding, 75% of the country should play the sport. Sadly, that's not the case here. Ice hockey is played in Ladakh and Shimla. So it's negligible,' said Vedank Singh, the Ice Hockey Association of India's digital marketing lead.
'But I can see the potential and determination in these players. So something good will happen,' he added.
On one hand Shane Watson is being paid a whopping Rs 9.5 crore for not representing India and on the other hand, these women are deprived of putting Indian ice-hockey firmly on the global map.
So, this International Women's Day, let's #SupportIceHockey.
You can support the team by donating here: https://www.bitgiving.com/supporticehockey.
