Impoverished cricket star dreams big

Mumbai cricket has more than its fair share of stories of determined cricketers using cricket to escape poverty and the squalor of their surroundings. Sweety Abdul is one such rising star, who stays in a small hut that dots the boundary at Cross Maidan. Devendra Pandey, of Indian Express, speaks to the young girl who has just made it to the Mumbai senior team.

The jersey, which marks Sweety’s entry into the Mumbai senior team this season, will have to hang outside on a tree, along with her pads and her bat. The small hut that the all-rounder shares with her ailing mother and sister — her father died when she was nine — has little space. The nights are long and dark, with no electricity.