There have been elaborate pontifications over the way in which the sports-watching audience in India – largely male – view women sports in general. The family dynamic plays a part where the patriarch is usually the one in charge of the television remote control. And that pretty much determines what kind of sports programming receives a priority treatment in the collective household viewing. While tastes and preferences are obviously moulded by deep social conditioning, they are also a result of habit-formation. People tend to have less and less space for the new as they grow older and the habitual viewing that they had picked up during their formative years somehow remains stuck. After a point, one is not even consciously making a choice. It becomes a function of muscle memory.Cricket, for the longest time, has been thought of as an exclusively male sport in India because the television never allowed for our imagination to run farther than that. This familiarity with one form of cricket inherently breeds contempt for any other kind that does not ‘look’ or ‘feel’ the same on initial viewing.At a rudimentary level, the points where women’s cricket has struggled the most in being perceived as a ‘serious sport’ are the two most celebrated elements of men’s cricket – rapid fast bowling and power hitting. For those having grown up exclusively watching men’s cricket, phrases like “chin music” and “brute force” construct their fundamental perceptions of the sport.While the two aspects are biologically impossible to match for women’s cricket, they offer an incredible aesthetic appeal that demands a taste be built for. The majority of seam bowling in women’s cricket occurs in a speed range that is super-conducive to movement in the air and off the pitch. The spinners, on average, give far more air to the ball as opposed to darting into the surface, which has become increasingly common in the men’s version. This further leads to newer scoring areas being explored by batters which gives a very distinctive feel to the contest. Smriti Mandhana guiding a ball seaming away from her with a straight bat behind the backward square is no short of a spectacle. For context, this particular area of the field would, in a men’s game, be primarily accessed by batters with a cross-batted shot. There are plenty of finer nuances that allow women’s cricket to be acknowledged as a standalone product and not one necessarily competing for attention with men’s cricket. India’s Richa Ghosh bats during day three of the first Women’s Test match at Lord’s cricket ground in London, Sunday July 12, 2026, Photo: AP/PTI.It will however be wrong to suggest no efforts have been made to cultivate these tastes. There is a strong and sustained base for women’s cricket today that remains invested in their respective teams through the season. The broadcasters’ seriousness in India can be instantly measured by the fact that they make equally juvenile and nauseous promos as they do for the men. There are as many as three T20 franchise leagues, even though not without their own challenges of scheduling and attaining broadcasting slots.However, nearly all of the effort in advancing the sport and opening up the field for women has been limited to white-ball cricket. Be it the leagues, the high-profile International Cricket Council events or the bilateral tours of higher frequency, there seems to be an undeclared consensus among those running the sport that women’s cricket has no meaningful prospects as a test match sport.The emphatic fashion in which the Indian women beat their English counterparts at Lord’s in a one-off test match recently has surely generated some headlines. But it is astonishing, if not downright infuriating, to even think this was the first ever women’s test played at the universally heralded “home of cricket.”The sporadic and infrequent nature of test matches has never quite allowed the format to even experiment with different avenues, let alone fully flourish in women’s cricket. The assumptions about its viability are way too hard-wired for the administrators to take any active steps in exploring the new markets it may possibly tap into.Much like the limited overs versions, women’s test cricket too is not going to fully ape men’s cricket. It is going to take attitude adjustment on part of both administrators and fans. Searing bouncers, packed slip-cordons, riveting spells of reverse-swing – the very elements that have characterised the viewing experience of men’s tests are not necessarily as defining when women don the whites.India’s Yastika Bhatia, right, celebrates reaching her hundred with Deepti Sharma during day three of the first Women’s Test match at Lord’s cricket ground in London, Sunday July 12, 2026, Photo: AP/PTI.It is somewhat hard to imagine bowlers being able to beat batters through their defence with unexceptional speeds and modest bounce. It is different in limited-overs games when batters are actively looking to score runs and are thus more prone to making errors resulting in wickets. But can the women’s tests move forward at all with the physical constraints they are set up against? Well, as long as those questions come from a place of genuine curiosity, watching highlights of Kranti Gaud and Sneh Rana’s spells from the recent Lord’s test should sufficiently put them to rest. And at the very least they should be more interested in revisiting some of the test matches that the women’s teams of India, Australia, England and South Africa have played in the last five years.Unlike what these reservations may lead one to think, these matches have produced exciting, result-oriented contests with teams being able to exploit home conditions. But a complete absence of continuity and frequency does not allow these events to register as something the fans should want more of.Even whatever little progress has been made in this period has predominantly been limited to the four teams mentioned above. The likes of Pakistan, New Zealand, West Indies and Bangladesh have been left completely bereft of the opportunity and there is none on the horizon either. The New Zealand and West Indies boards have, in fact, rather candidly conceded their inability to have a pathway to host test matches for their women’s teams.Economics of sport is a reality that cannot be wished away merely by noble intentions. It is a cruel world in which lesser boards are finding it hard to host more tests even for their men’s teams. But this is exactly where women’s cricket requires more shared efforts to make test matches more viable than they currently are.It is not like the franchise T20 leagues immediately started raking in profits either. It is an investment that needs tender caring and a vision that is not obsessed with instant monetary returns. It was not too long ago before the limited-overs cricket for women too was thought of on not too dissimilar lines.India’s Kranti Gaud, center, celebrates after taking the wicket of England’s Tammy Beaumont during day three of the first Women’s Test match at Lord’s cricket ground in London, Sunday July 12, 2026, Photo: AP/PTI.But money, infrastructure and a higher visibility on television changed things very tangibly. It has reached a point where today there’s discourse over whether India needs to phase out their ageing superstar Harmanpreet Kaur and people are weighing in their hot takes. Players have become household names, though some of that attention has predictably proved toxic.None of this was even thinkable for a cricketer representing the Indian women’s team only a couple of generations ago. The shift in landscape is evidence of the markets being more open to change than those wearing fancy suits think; and there is no reason to assume the markets will not respond with similar warmth if the women’s field were extended to test cricket.ICC officials have already discussed allocating a separate fund for men’s tests to help the smaller boards fund more test matches than they currently are able to. Women’s teams could seriously use greater collaboration where a dedicated fund subsists the cost of hosting tests until the markets begin to respond.There has been a tendency prevalent among those on the progressive side of the political divide to treat the larger audience as irredeemable; that they are incapable of unlearning the biases that shaped their worldview. But it is impossible to shame a person into liking something. People will latch on to it the day they find a product ‘worthy’ of their time. And it is up to the administrators to ensure every product gets the best possible shot at being accepted.Until those in charge of running cricket in India do not actively take any meaningful measures to help women’s tests reach the casual fan, everything else remains lip service. A nominal match-fee equity does not even come close to making up for these inadequacies. Championing the cause of women’s cricket requires a commitment that goes way beyond curating favourable sound-bites from players and parading it around for greater self-aggrandisement.