Ranji Trophy: The careers of female umpires Rathi, Narayanan, and Venugopalan in the Ranji Trophy
The Ranji Trophy 2022–23 season started on December 13, 2022. Three female umpires who officiated in Ranji Trophy games for the first time ever—Vrinda Rathi, Janani Narayanan, and Gayathri Venugopalan—wrote history.
Ranji Trophy competition
Women umpires Vrinda Rathi, Janani Narayanan, and Gayathri Venugopalan became the first to officiate in the current Ranji Trophy event in India on Tuesday. The trio commands a lot of respect in women’s cricket.
Venugopalan is the match official for Jharkhand and Chattisgarh’s second-round match. The matches between Goa and Pondicherry and Railways and Tripura, respectively, will be officiated by Narayanan and Rathi.
The trio made history when the BCCI chose female umpires for the domestic men’s circuit. They were well-known on the women’s circuit and hailed from various racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.
The 36-year-old Narayanan loved everything about cricket and its ancillary sports. Since she desired to be on the field, she twice addressed the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) to seek to be an umpire.
She successfully passed the Level 2 BCCI umpiring exam in 2018, a few years after the state organisation changed its policy to allow women to officiate, so she didn’t have to give it much thinking before quitting her secure IT job to pursue umpiring. She also officiated matches in the Tamil Nadu Premier League in 2021. However, the 32-year-old Rathi has come out of Mumbai’s maidans.
She used to score neighbourhood games before completing the BCCI scorer’s exam. She served as the BCCI’s designated scorer for the 2013 Women’s World Cup. Later, she changed her career to umpiring.
Both Narayanan and Rathi have extensive experience as officials, and they previously served on the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) panel of development officials. Denis Burns, a seasoned umpire trainer who has worked closely with Indian umpires and helped them advance to the international level, applauded the pair’s promotion to the ICC development panel.
I think Janani and Vrinda are the ‘new wave’ of Indian woman umpires, he declared. Despite living in Delhi, 43-year-old Venugopalan’s desire to play cricket was crushed by a shoulder injury. Her umpiring career began in 2019 after she passed the BCCI exam.
She has already served as the Ranji Trophy’s fourth reserve umpire. The BCCI still has a long way to go because women are already serving as umpires in men’s cricket in Australia and England. There are only three female umpires among the 150 that have registered with the BCCI.