The year that twins Myra and Rhea Sabherwal were born, Australia was on the precipice of a women’s sporting revolution in cricket. The following year, in 2015, Cricket Australia launched the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) as the first-of-its-kind domestic cricket women’s T20 tournament, a cricket format that countries all over the world have imbibed for their women’s cricket leagues and followed since.
The Sabherwal twins are 10 years old now, and that is exactly the number of seasons the WBBL has been running for. Now in its 10th season, the WBBL is one of the biggest inspirations for girls, not just in Australia, but around the world, its popularity and trailblazing history a testament to women’s cricketing glory.
Ten seasons from now, Myra and Rhea could well be playing WBBL themselves. The girls transitioned to playing club cricket for the first time in their young lives last month when the 2024/25 junior cricket season opened across Sydney and parts of regional NSW. The twins, who played Woolworths Cricket Blast last season, move up to junior cricket and played their first match as part of an all-girls team with West Epping Cricket Club against a mixed team from West Ryde Rovers Cricket Club at Smalls Park.
West Epping CC didn’t win but made coach and dad Rahul Sabherwal terribly proud. He takes pride in the all-girls team and is primarily responsible for the formation of the team in the first place. He volunteered to coach the team in its first year and is happy with the initial results.
He knows that the 10-year-olds find the junior cricket process daunting at first, wearing pads, helmets, gloves and playing with a hard ball, but he is confident they’ll find their rhythm and play better and better as the season gets underway. He has already identified the strengths of each of his daughters. Rhea has a great bowling arm while Myra is athletic as a fielder.
Rhea also has a keen interest in cricket stats. There was always a culture of cricket in the house, as is true of most Indian families. Rahul came to Australia as a student from Delhi, India, in 2004 to study business administration. In 2006, he found a group of friends and started playing park cricket, and then joined the West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Cricket Club that he still plays for.
He recalls the time his wife Pooja was expecting the twins in 2014. Pooja was unwell, but he had the season’s final cricket match to play. He actually got his sister-in-law to fly in from Melbourne and be with Pooja so he could go and play cricket. He even remembers he won, and that gave him almost as much joy as the twins being born shortly after. Needless to say, the daughters have inherited Dad’s enthusiasm for the game.
From the time that they were four, the twins (and their older sister, Sanya) have often been to grounds to see Dad play cricket. Throughout their life in the last decade, the family has gone to BBL and WBBL matches played by the Sydney Sixers and Thunder at SCG and Engie Stadium.
Last season, at the age of nine, the twins decided to start playing Cricket Blast. They enjoyed it so much that they decided to take cricket more seriously and transition to junior cricket this season. Avid Sixers fans, the girls love to be in pink themselves and are looking to be part of an on-ground engagement this season because they missed out on the last one.
Dad Rahul, meanwhile, can’t have enough of how well his little girls play. “Rhea can zip through when she bowls,” he proudly remarks.