Bowling the right length, hitting it straight, always

Cricketer Jigna Gajjar quit the game after marriage as she found it difficult to continue with the game. “However, the cricketer in me was always alive and kept pushing me to continue but I could not,” says Jigna Gajjar, a former West Zone player who represented Gujarat.

Nothing new, one would say. Especially when it sadly comes to women's cricket. While the story of most of her teammates in women cricket is no different, Jigna was made of different mettle. Today, this right-arm medium fast bowler imparts professional coaching to children in the age group of 10 years to 20 years.

Again nothing new, one can say. However, therein lies a key difference.  The difference is that Jigna imparts her cricketing skills to children from the economically weaker section and living in slums.

“I have children whose parents are either tea vendors, rickshaw drivers or labourers. They all study in municipality-run government schools and the coaching I give is completely free,” Jigna says.

Jigna is proud of one statistics in her cricketing career—she has never bowled a no ball or a wide ball. She had to struggle a lot in the beginning of her coaching career. She persisted and moved around schools to meet teachers and children’s parents to allow their wards to attend coaching.

“Many came as it was for free but I have a very strict criterion. I am putting in my time and efforts, so I insist that they too put in equal efforts. They need to be punctual not just to cricket practice but in their schooling. They have to attend school. But that is not enough, above all they need to have aptitude to play cricket. I am also a stickler for discipline. I have had to ask about three of my students to leave as they did not adhere to discipline,” Jigna says.

And it is not just free coaching that she imparts to children, she shells out money to hire the ground for coaching as well as tournaments. “The other big problem of working with kids from poor economic background is the complete lack of nutrition. If they have Rs five, they would buy a wafer or a biscuit. I try to teach them that instead they should buy a banana every day and eat. I also try to take fruits for my students. But their fitness and agility remain a big challenge,” Jigna rues.

Jigna’s tryst with cricket began rather late in her life. Though her mother and father were avid cricket followers, none of her family members had played professional cricket. Her father was a teacher and mother a homemaker and she was a “huge” fan of India’s all-rounder great Kapil Dev. Still Jigna had to sulk and cry her heart out for over two days to convince her parents to take up coaching.

“It was in the third year of my graduation around 2003. I attended college in the mornings and was part of a theatre group. One day I got delayed during rehearsals and while  moving out, I saw girls in my college at cricket coaching. I was surprised to know that my college offered professional coaching to girls. I had to immediately join in,” Jigna says.

Once she had convinced her parents, Jigna never looked back and went on to represent the state team. But everything changed in 2008, when she married. It was not her in-laws who pressurised her to quit the game she loved.  She continued to play cricket in tournaments for over a year but felt torn between her cricketing career and domestic duties and quit.

“My husband is an interior designer. He and my in-laws have always encouraged me to continue but I somehow could not manage both domestic and cricketing fronts. So when I decided to coach slum children, my in-laws supported me. Today I am able to coach only due to complete financial support from my husband and in-laws, who help pay ground hiring charges, food and other expenses for my students,” Jigna adds.

For over three years, Jigna has been hiring and hitting the ground three times a week, training over 40 children, including 13 girls, in the nitty-gritty of cricket, without a break.

“I want to train them from Monday to Friday but sadly my family and I have limited resources that we can utilise but I have no complaints as this has become my life,” she added. She now hopes that one of her wards would achieve success in cricket that she only aspired to.

“My biggest regret in life has been that I could never don Indian colours. But I am hopeful and living my dream through my students. Though coaching these children gives me pleasure equal to representing my country in cricket, my biggest hope now is to see at least one of my children play for India someday,”  she says.