If you haven’t yet seen the Nike video that is aimed at promoting women in sport, please do get your head checked. The video features many of India’s athletes, some known, some unknown, but all of them talented. There is also Deepika Padukone, playing badminton against a barrage of shuttlecocks. The video shows many athletes, like squash player Joshna Chinappa, footballer Jyoti Ann Burrett who is the Indian team’s star striker and hockey’s Rani Rampal, among many others.
You’ll many in their own element, training, practicising, running over cars in the street….just the normal stuff that athletes do to stay fit. There is also, hold your breath because this is a breakthrough idea, dancing with trucks all around, straight from the Punjabi heartland.
The video dropped (yes, that’s modern speak for premiered) two days ago and garnered publicity and millions of hits in less than a day. That’s surprising, because normally a video featuring women dressed in sports bras and tight leggings would hardly ever get a few hundred hits normally (sic!).
All said and done, the video is meant to get your attention and throw a couple of talented but sadly unknown sportswomen into the limelight. It does that. It doesn’t do much for empowering women and breaking stereotypes when you consider the ‘item number’ type dancing and the scene with white tshirts doused in sweat, but we’ll let you rant about that, if you wish.
Check the video out on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UvPZ8fD4B8 or scan the QR code.
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Here are some of India’s star ladies
Rani Rampal
Rani was the youngest player in the Indian women’s national field hockey team in 2010, joining when she was only 15 years old. She is the only Indian to have been nominated for the International Hockey Federation (FIH) Women's Young Player of the Year Award in 2010.
Jyoti Ann Burrett
At just 5 foot 3 inches, Jyoti is no pushover. She is the striker of the Indian women's football team, beginning her journey in 2013. She has a Masters degree in Sports and Health Science from University of Exeter, but decided to play football instead, because she is that passionate about the sport.
Joshna Chinappa
This amazing squash player reached a career-high world ranking of World No. 10 recently. She was the youngest Indian women's national champion in squash and also the only Indian to win the British Squash Championship title in 2003. She even won the squash women’s doubles gold medal along with Dipika Pallikal.
Ishita Malaviya
India’s first professional female surfer, Ishita has been making waves for brands like Roxy and Quicksilver. Now she’s a Nike lady. Malaviya has co-founded one of the country’s foremost surf schools, Shaka Surf Club.
Namrata Purohit
Namrata is one of the youngest fully-trained Stott Pilates instructors in the world. She has trained the likes of cricketers Abhishek Nayar and Dhawal Kulkarni, football players Renedy Singh and Manandeep Singh and even celebrities like Neha Dhupia, Bruna Abdullah, Hazel Keech and Shibani Dandekar. Namrata was a talented national-level squash player, but fell off a horse at age 16, underwent knee surgery and with a sporting career not an option anymore, she took to Pilates.
Harmanpreet Kaur
Harmanpreet is the captain of the Indian women's cricket team, which almost made it to the World T20 semi-finals. She was India’s leading run scorer and wicket-taker in the tournament. Harmanpreet is also set to become the first India women's cricketer to be signed by an overseas Twenty20 franchise when she joins Sydney Thunder to compete in the Women's Big Bash League.
