Mother and daughter bat for Singapore
Donning the gloves and standing behind the stumps in a manner reminiscent of her idol M.S. Dhoni, Dhwani Prakas was just 15 when she debuted for Singapore in the 2022 Saudari Cup, a T20I cricket series with Malaysia.
She had been talent-spotted just three months earlier by national women’s team coach Chamal De Silva while accompanying her 11-year-old brother Dhruv for his U-12 cricket training.
Chamal described to Dhwani’s parents that “she had a natural wicketkeeping technique” and encouraged them to enlist her for training at the Singapore National Cricket Academy (SNCA), paving the way for her to represent Singapore at the international level.
Like Dhwani, there is plenty of cricketing talent among women in Singapore, and the Singapore Cricket Association (SCA) is on a mission to unearth it.
The Singapore Women’s Cricket Pathway was established as part of the SCA Vision 2025 Multi-year Strategic Plan to provide a seamless route into the national team for women cricketers through high-performance coaching.
Beginning with the SNCA, which recruits players as young as seven, girls can progress to the National Development Squad and later the National Elite Squad. From the Elites, a smaller squad is selected to represent Singapore in tournaments. Girls are eligible for national squads at age 13 and T20 internationals at age 15. Further details are available at singaporecricket.org.
Dhwani’s mother Vidhya, 38, is now an integral part of this pathway.
Having become an ActiveSG-certified coach at the SNCA in March last year, she has also been serving as the national women’s team manager since January this year.
Seeing her daughter’s growth reminds Vidhya of how far women’s cricket has come. She told Tabla: “When I played cricket in school in India, there were no women’s tournaments, and I was questioned how I could match up to the boys. I eventually stopped playing.”
Singapore’s growing reputation in international women’s leagues provides extra motivation for the women cricketers here.
Known as the Sunbirds, the national women’s cricket team made its T20I debut in the 2018 Saudari Cup against Malaysia, winning two matches out of a six-match series. It recorded its first T20I series win on Feb 10, 2023.
Chamal looks back with pride: “At the ACC Women’s T20 Championship 2022, right after the Covid-19 break, a number of our 11 players were 15 years old, and we were playing Oman who had all fully contracted players. My world cup winning mentor was their coach. Yet, our girls beat them.”
He added: “We have come quite far since 2019 when we were ranked 46 out of 46 and had just 15 girls to today, having more than 370 active girls playing cricket, a 10-team Sunbirds league, development squads, four-days-a-week training and a growing academy.”
Singapore still rank 46 out of 66 teams. In comparison, Thailand are 12th, Indonesia 20th, Malaysia 24th, Myanmar 40th and Japan 50th.
Chamal also oversees the SNCA Build a Healthy Future Cricket Scholarship that gives young talents a professionally designed pathway to represent Singapore. Scholarship recipients receive SCA-sponsored coaching worth $2,500 a year.
He notes that the SNCA is widening its talent search to orphanages, special needs schools and underprivileged families. It is also supplying more coaches to mainstream schools.
However, he acknowledges that certain challenges persist.
“Our players are all part-timers,” he said. “Their full-time jobs or studies give them limited leave. Further, due to their work schedule, we train at night after 7pm whereas matches are in the day, so players have to adjust.”
His dream is to see his players go to the World Cup. “Our team is young and has plenty of match winners. With training, they can improve by 60 to 70 per cent.”
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