More Indian women play cricket now than in 2020 - BBC study
· Yahoo Sports
One in 10 women who participated in a new BBC study conducted across 14 Indian states say they play cricket, a significant increase on the last survey six years ago.
The 2020 study found there were five times more men playing cricket than women. This gap had narrowed to three times more men than women in 2026.
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Playing, in the context of the survey, refers to anyone saying they currently play the sport. Forty per cent of the women who play cricket do so at least once a week.
The survey, commissioned by the BBC and Collective Newsroom as part of the Indian Sportswoman of the Year initiative, aimed to assess participation of Indian women in sport, and wider societal attitudes towards sportswomen.
It was conducted by interviewing 10,304 respondents aged 15 or older.
Around 51% of respondents said they have followed coverage of women's sports in the past six months. This is not very far behind the proportion of people who said they have followed men's sports coverage (63%).
Young women (aged 15-24) are the key demographic driving these changes in participation and viewership of women's sports, the survey findings suggest. One in four (26%) respondents in this category said they had considered sports as a career option, up from 16% in 2020.
India shooter Manu Bhaker won two medals at the 2024 Olympics [Getty Images]The latest survey comes against the backdrop of significant achievements by Indian sportswomen. Shooter Manu Bhaker made history by winning two medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics and Indian women won 10 medals at the Paralympics the same year. In 2025, the Indian women's cricket team brought joy to the country by winning their first World Cup on home soil.
These success stories seem to be inspiring others. Forty-three per cent of the study's respondents said that they watched women's games live in the past six months, compared with 54% for men's events. The viewership gap is narrower when it comes to attending games in person - 29% say they have attended women's sporting events, against 37% for men's events.
Badminton is also a popular sport - 6% of the women surveyed now play the sport, up from 4% in 2020.
The study also indicated that long-standing attitudes and expectations about women's suitability for sport and their appearance persist. Some of these beliefs are more subscribed to now than they were in 2020, the findings suggest.
Around 43% of respondents said they believe that women's sports are less entertaining than men's sports, up from 38% in 2020. There was a similar rise in respondents who said that female sportspersons are not feminine enough.
India won their first ICC Women's World Cup in 2025 [Getty Images]Notably, such responses were not confined to men. The study highlighted that nearly one in two respondents thought that sportswomen should look attractive, and women were more likely than men to agree with this statement.
The findings indicated only a modest improvement in the proportion of Indians playing sports overall, across all disciplines, in the fourteen states covered. Even as 74% of Indians in the study (up from 69% in 2020) said that they played games or sport as children, only half of them said they continued to do so as adults.
Two-thirds of the respondents said that they did not participate in any sport because of time constraints.
Methodology:
The 2026 survey was conducted by Kantar India, who also ran the 2020 study. The project interviewed 10,304 people aged 15 years and up across 14 Indian states. The sample aimed to represent all 14 states surveyed in terms of age, gender, socio-economic class and rural/urban locations. The survey questionnaire administered remained the same with the exception of a few questions being added; as did the survey's sampling methodology, so that the two studies remained comparable.
