Transforming The Sport - Aarti Dabas

Aarti Dabas is Media Rights Services Manager for the International Cricket Council.
How did you become involved in the game?
Growing up in India, it’s impossible not to get involved in the game. My father was a club cricketer with a leading club in Delhi, cricket and politics were dinner table conversation and the streetss and parks were always reverberating with sounds of ‘catch it’ or ‘howzzat’. But my first foray in cricket was doing a small television feature piece on the Indian women’s cricket team being coached by the legendary India left arm spinner Bishen Singh Bedi and since then I’ve never looked back.

Describe some of the different roles you have worked on related to cricket?
A fan during the 1983 World Cup, scorer and manager for the TWI India team, a sports news presenter on national television, a columnist for The Indian Express during India’s tour of Pakistan in 2004, a cricket expert for a radio sports show in Dubai, a features reporter during various cricket tours around the world, a producer of live cricket broadcasts including the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 and now I work for the International Cricket Council.

**Are there enough opportunities for women wanting to work in the sport?**When I started my journalism career as a sport reporter, I could count the number of women reporters at international cricket training sessions on the fingers of one hand. But today, on some tours, there are equal number of male and female journalists. I’ve seen a woman cameraperson covering live cricket and the groundsperson at the P Sara stadium in Colombo is a woman. Also, at the ICC, almost 40% of the staff are women, so opportunities are aplenty.