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Before the likes of Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur put Indian women’s cricket on the world map, there was Diana Edulji – a true pioneer who laid the foundation from the ground up.
Predating central contracts, televised matches and the glitz and riches of the Women’s Premier League, Edulji’s career unfolded in an era defined by anonymity, resistance and scarce opportunity.
Yet across nearly two decades, she became one of the early faces of the game in India, using her skills and resilience to push Indian women’s cricket forward through anonymity.
Born on January 26, 1956, in Mumbai into a Parsi family, Diana Edulji grew up in a railway colony as her father worked as an officer for the Western Railways. It was here, playing tennis-ball cricket with boys in the bylanes, that she first picked up the game.
A natural athlete, Diana also played basketball and table tennis at the junior national level but eventually chose cricket as her primary sport.
Her transition to organised cricket came in the early 1970s with Albees, one of Mumbai’s first women’s cricket clubs.
Around the same time, the formation of the Women’s Cricket Association of India in 1973 created a formal route to the national side – one Diana Edulji was quick to seize.
Diana Edulji’s cricket career
Diana Edulji made her international debut against the West Indies in 1976 in Bengaluru, in what was the Indian women’s cricket team’s first-ever official Test match.
Her elder sister Behroze was also part of the historic Indian XI which took the field during that match. Unlike Diana, though, it would be Behroze’s only India cap.
Diana took three wickets in her debut match, bowling an astonishing 39 overs across two innings – an incredible show of tenacity and endurance which would define her career going forward.
The left-arm spinner ended up delivering 5098 balls – almost 850 overs – in Women’s Test matches – a record that still stands. Australia’s Raelee Thompson, with 4304, is second on the list.
Beyond being a workhorse bowler, Diana also established herself as a wicket-taker, claiming 17 wickets in six matches in her debut series.
She also scored an unbeaten 57 in the second match of the series in Chennai – her highest score in international cricket. In the fourth match of the series in Patna, Diana Edulji contributed with three wickets and a crucial 38 runs as the Indian women registered their first-ever victory in Women’s Tests
Across a 17-year international career, she featured in 20 Tests and 34 ODIs, finishing with 109 official wickets. At the time of her retirement, only Australia’s Lyn Fullston had taken more wickets in women’s international cricket.
In Test cricket, Edulji’s record remains enduring. Her 63 wickets – still the highest by an Indian woman – place her third on the all-time list behind England’s Mary Duggan and Australia’s Betty Wilson. Her best figures of 6/64 in the format came against Australia.
Her 20 Test caps are also the second-most by any Indian woman after Sudha Shah, who has one more. Overall, only seven players worldwide have played 20 or more official matches in the format.
In WODIs, Diana Edulji picked up 46 wickets in 34 matches at an impressive average of 16.84, operating as India’s primary middle-overs enforcer. Across formats, she is the first Indian woman to cross the 100-wickets threshold in international cricket.
At one time, she was also considered the first woman to take 100 Test wickets, but later, the records were altered as some of the games she played were not deemed ‘international’ matches.
Diana Edulji’s captaincy
Diana Edulji captained the Indian side in 18 ODIs and four Tests over the course of her career. While there were no glorious triumphs, her leadership spanned a crucial developmental phase for the team when India was building its competitive identity.
She led India in their first-ever official ODI match against England in a group game of the 1978 Women’s World Cup at the Eden Gardens. It was also the Indian women’s cricket team’s maiden World Cup appearance.
Diana was also in India’s campaign during the 1993 World Cup in England, after which she retired from international cricket. She had retired from the longer format in 1991 with her final appearance coming against Australia in Melbourne.
How Diana Edulji’s Railways job inspired India’s women’s cricket revolution
It wasn’t just what she did on the field – Diana Edulji’s work off it helped build the backbone of women’s cricket in India.
In 1976, while the third Test against the West Indies was underway in Delhi, Diana, spotting an opportunity as much as a necessity, personally approached Kamalapati Tripathi, then the Indian Railways minister, for a job.
The Railways minister was attending the match as his daughter-in-law, Chandra Tripathi, was the erstwhile President of the newly-formed Women’s Cricket Association of India.
With her father due to retire the same year, Diana asked Kamalapati for a job in the Railways under sports quota. Despite Railways not being associated with women’s cricket at the time, her request would be granted.
That cold approach for a job would reshape Indian women’s cricket going forward.
With a secure day job and freedom to focus on the game, Diana became, perhaps, the first semi-professional women’s cricket player in the country.
From inside the ecosystem, Diana would become one of the primary drivers behind the Indian Railways becoming one of the biggest patrons of women’s cricket in India in the early years.
In 1984, Railways launched an intra-organisational tournament, allowing for more cricketers to be employed with the organisation.
It was a game-changer. In an era when most players, in India and elsewhere, had to secure their own livelihoods alongside the game, employment with the Indian Railways offered something unique.
The cricketers weren’t professionals in the modern sense, but they had a system that allowed them to pursue the sport seriously. There was time to train, to compete and even to recover – a balance that was otherwise out of reach for most women cricketers of that generation.
Diana Edulji was the catalyst for the system and was also responsible for transforming Railways into the most dominant force in the domestic circuit, winning 11 national titles. Edulji herself continued playing domestic cricket into her 40s.
The Railways factor was central to unearthing and nurturing talents like Jhulan Goswami, Mithali Raj, Anjum Chopra, Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana, who went on to become pillars of the Indian women’s cricket team in the future.
Diana Edulji played a hands-on role in mentoring many of them.
Her influence did not fade with retirement; it only expanded.
She has served as a national selector, an administrator for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), becoming a key voice in governance reforms.
Unafraid to challenge inequality and administrative apathy, even at personal cost, Diana Edulji’s journey – both as a player and administrator – has been defined by her push for better pay, facilities and accountability in women’s cricket.
Diana Edulji’s awards and legacy
Diana Edulji received the Arjuna Award in 1983 and the Padma Shri in 2002.
In 2023, she became the first Indian woman to be inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame – a milestone that acknowledged not just her sporting numbers, but her foundational role in shaping the sport.
Closer home, the Mumbai Cricket Association honoured her by naming a gate at the iconic Wankhede Stadium after her – a symbolic tribute to a career that began in the city’s modest maidans.
Perhaps beyond the recognition is what the name Diana Edulji means for the sport today.
If today’s Indian women cricketers operate in a professional setup – with central contracts and leagues like the WPL – it owes much to players like Diana Edulji.
She played in an era of little money, limited recognition and almost no support, often paying her own way to represent the country. Leadership, for her, meant pushing back against bias as much as competing on the field.
As Edulji herself put it, “Our journey has been a long one, and it was very difficult playing in those days. People would say that women shouldn’t play and that they belonged in the kitchen. But we survived all that. We played purely for the passion. We even paid our own expenses to travel abroad and represent India.”
Even after retirement, she remained invested in the game, working to ensure the next generation had it better.
A pioneer and a builder, Diana Edulji didn’t just play the game – she helped shape what it would become.
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