A landmark study released this week tells a story that the grassroots coaches, school cricket administrators and WPL franchise owners already knew was coming — but now have the data to prove. Women’s participation in cricket across 14 Indian states has doubled in five years, and among young women aged 15 to 24, it has nearly tripled.

The BBC and Collective Newsroom commissioned the research from Kantar India, which interviewed 10,304 people aged 15 and above across 14 states between December 2025 and January 2026, replicating a methodology used in a landmark 2020 BBC survey. The results, published Thursday, are the clearest picture yet of how Indian women’s relationship with cricket — as players, as viewers and as aspiring professionals — has transformed in the years since the Women’s Premier League arrived and the Indian national women’s team began winning at the highest level.

The Headline Numbers

The core finding is straightforward: across the 14 states surveyed, the proportion of women who say they play cricket has doubled from 5% in 2020 to 10% in 2026. Among women aged 15 to 24, it has grown even faster — from 6% to 16%, a near-tripling in the cohort most likely to take the game seriously and make it part of their identity.

Cricket has also pulled decisively clear of kabaddi — long its closest rival in the women’s participation stakes. In 2020, the two sports were virtually neck-and-neck. By 2026, cricket is firmly India’s most played sport among women in the states surveyed. Badminton has also seen sharp growth, particularly in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — but the cricket numbers are the headline of this study, and with good reason.

The Uttar Pradesh Story: From One in a Hundred to One in Ten

The regional findings are some of the study’s most striking, and nowhere more so than Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

In 2020, just 1% of women surveyed in UP said they played cricket. By 2026, that figure is 10% — a tenfold increase in five years. The practical implications are enormous: UP, with a population of over 230 million, is not a small sample. A shift from 1% to 10% in female cricket participation at that scale represents millions of additional women picking up a bat.

The national team has played a part here. Richa Ghosh, Deepti Sharma and Pooja Vastrakar — all from central and eastern India — have provided visible, aspirational role models in a geography that previously had few prominent female cricket figures. Deepti Sharma is from Agra, UP. When young girls in Lucknow or Varanasi watch her bowl a side out in a WPL game or clean up a tail in an ODI series, the imagined distance between village ground and international cricket contract shortens visibly.

The WPL Effect: How a League Changed the Numbers

The Women’s Premier League — launched by the BCCI in March 2023, 15 years after the IPL — is the single biggest structural driver behind the study’s numbers. Its now in its fourth season, with the 2026 edition hosted across Navi Mumbai and Vadodara following the successful third season in 2025 that coincided with India women winning the ODI World Cup.

The numbers on viewership tell this story clearly. Viewership of the WPL’s predecessor event, the T20 Challenge, stood at 15% among the states surveyed in 2020. By 2026, viewership of the WPL itself has reached 28% — an 87% increase — and is now within striking distance of IPL viewership in the same cohort. WPL franchises onboarded 23 new commercial partners for the 2026–27 seasons, including mainstream brands like Ashok Leyland and BKT who had not previously associated themselves with women’s cricket.

The league created something specific that grassroots cricket could not generate on its own: financial credibility. When parents in Meerut or Madurai see a young woman sign a WPL contract worth ₹20–40 lakh, or earn a BCCI central contract at par with the men’s equivalent match fee — equal pay policy announced in 2022 — the family economics conversation around allowing daughters to pursue cricket changes permanently.

Young Women Seeing Sport as a Profession — Not Just a Pastime

The statistic that stands alongside the participation data in importance is the career aspiration finding: 26% of women aged 15 to 24 say they have considered sport as a career, up from 16% in 2020.

Tamil Nadu leads with 27%, followed by Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya at 19% each. Tamil Nadu’s position is not surprising — the state has consistently produced both cricket and badminton talent at the highest level, has well-developed infrastructure at the district level for girls’ sport, and has the highest density of sports academies per capita in South India.

“The findings show both progress and continuing barriers. While participation and viewership are rising fast, stereotypes and practical challenges remain. We hope this data will prompt further discussion and action to support women athletes,” said Rupa Jha, Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder of Collective Newsroom.

The Barriers That Haven’t Moved Enough

The study earns its credibility precisely because it does not present an unqualified celebration. Several findings push back against the progress narrative with data that is uncomfortable and important.

Sixty-five per cent of women who do not play sport say lack of time is the primary reason. This is not a cricket problem — it is a structural inequality problem. Women’s unpaid domestic labour burden, school dropout pressures, family restrictions on mobility after dark, and the absence of women-only training slots at most municipal sports grounds all sit behind that 65% figure.

Thirteen per cent cite safety concerns as a specific barrier — a figure that reflects the reality of travelling to evening practice sessions, changing facilities that do not exist, and grounds where women have historically been made to feel like guests rather than players.

The attitudinal data is particularly pointed. Forty-three per cent of respondents still say women’s sport is less entertaining than men’s. Nearly half — 46%, up from 37% in 2020 — believe sportswomen should be attractive, and women are more likely than men to hold this view. That percentage has risen even as participation has grown, which suggests that the visual culture around women’s sport, driven partly by social media and franchise marketing, is reinforcing appearance-based expectations even as the grassroots reality becomes more inclusive.

What the Numbers Mean for Indian Cricket’s Future

The study was fielded across only 14 states — a large sample but not the whole of India. The most conservative reading of the data suggests that the participation trend is real, significant and accelerating.

The WPL’s fifth and sixth seasons, now contracted through 2027, will coincide with India’s preparation for the next ICC Women’s ODI World Cup cycle. The BCCI’s domestic women’s structure — the Senior Women’s One-Day Trophy, the T20 Trophy, and state association district leagues — has expanded its calendar every year since 2022. There are now more competitive games for women cricketers at every level than at any point in the sport’s history in India.

The BBC and Collective Newsroom study is not a projection. It is a measurement of a transformation that has already happened. The next survey, five years from now, will tell us whether what began as the WPL effect has become something deeper, older and harder to reverse: a generation of Indian women who grew up watching Smriti Mandhana play the cover drive and simply assumed that cricket was theirs too.