Shabina Jacob, a Motherly figure to women’s cricket in Kerala passed away on Sunday afternoon at the age of 64 years. She had been on the state’s selection committee for the last five years as a chairperson for women’s cricket team and has been tirelessly promoting the game since then. Shabina started playing cricket even when the game wasn’t officially recognized. She was undergoing treatment for cancer in the last several months in Vellore.
“I knew Shabina from the time she was a young girl in school. Her father Jacob was the sports director at the DPI (Director of Public Instructions) and many from my family belong to the sports fraternity. That’s how I knew her, as family friends. But later on, when she joined the Women’s College and became a student of cricket, I was the coach. That was the first time we started a women’s cricket team in Thiruvananthapuram,” says M Ranjit Thomas, general manager, Kerala Cricket Association in a conversation with newsminute.
Shabina was an all-rounder, Ranjit used to tease her: “Do you have glue on your hands, how do the balls stick so much!”
“Women’s cricket association in Kerala was an independent body, a private body. It is much later that the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) and the KCA took women’s cricket under its wing. Shabina later became secretary of the Thiruvananthapuram district women’s cricket association and afterward, she became secretary of the state women’s cricket association. She has been a motherly figure to the girls who joined. She started as a manager, taught the girls to play, and also became selector of various categories before becoming chairperson of the selection committee.”
Ranjit says he has never met another woman who has been so active in cricket for so many years. “She used to be involved even during her years at the bank, taking private leaves to make time for the girls. As a selector, she had to watch the matches too. She couldn’t be part of the last few selection trials but till her last breath, she was passionate about cricket.”
Source: Thenewsminute.com, TOI, Thebridge.in
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