After profitable the Ladies’s T20 World Cup for the Blind in November, the Indian group visited the Prime Minister’s residence, Rashtrapati Bhavan and the BCCI’s headquarters in Mumbai at the same time as a gentle stream of VIPs lined as much as meet them.
For captain T C Deepika, one interplay made a “actual distinction”.
Whereas assembly Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, Deepika raised a difficulty affecting her village, Tambalahatti, alongside the Karnataka border.
“I instructed him that there aren’t any roads to our village due to which we face bother,” Deepika, 23, toldThe Indian Specific. Kalyan instantly allotted Rs 6.2 crore for the mission.
The captain, who scored 246 runs in 5 video games on the World Cup in Sri Lanka together with a 91 from 58 balls towards Australia within the semifinals, now hopes her group’s win will change into a catalyst of change in her village – in additional methods than one.
The roads resulting in Deepika’s village, Tambalahatti. (Specific Photograph)
he Indian Specific visited Deepika’s village of 45 households, virtually all of them from the Yadav neighborhood primarily engaged in farming. It discovered that the roads weren’t the one downside there. “The households dwelling there nonetheless comply with regressive practices focused at girls,” Deepika stated, chatting with this newspaper individually over telephone.
“Ladies are nonetheless requested to sleep outdoors their houses, both in farms or beneath a tree, throughout their menstrual cycle. Pregnant girls, too, should not allowed to remain at residence. It is usually fairly widespread to see ladies getting married at a younger age,” she stated, including that these restrictions are due “lack of training”. “Class 4 is the place training ends in our village,” Deepika’s brother Girish stated.
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Deepika’s personal journey, her father Chakthamappa (60) stated, began with a expensive mishap when she was “5 months previous” resulting in lack of imaginative and prescient in a single eye. “She unintentionally poked her finger into her proper eye. Since there have been no services close by, we took her to 2 hospitals, one was 30 km away and one other round 68 km. They stored her within the hospital for 2 months. They stated they couldn’t do a lot. It price Rs 3,000, but it surely was like Rs 3 lakh to us at the moment,” he stated.
Chakthamappa and his spouse Chithamma (45) have been day by day wage farm labourers, incomes Rs 800 collectively on the times they bought work. After they didn’t, generally “for a number of days in a row, the household went to sleep on an empty abdomen”. Chakthamappa additionally grew tamarind on two acres of land he owned, however incurred losses and went into debt.
“Many occasions after I was younger, my brothers and I used to roam across the village looking for fruits fallen on the streets. If we discovered something, we picked it up and ate it,” Deepika stated.
Girish stated the monetary state of affairs was so dire that their “grandfather died of hunger” and their father “bought meals solely as soon as a day when he was younger”.
Away from residence
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After finding out until Class 4 at a college close to her residence, Deepika moved to the Faculty of the Blind at Kunigal in Karnataka until Class 7, and later went to the Ranga Rao Memorial Faculty for the Disabled in Mysuru until Class 10, the place she picked up cricket. The college supplied free training and hostel lodging for visually-challenged youngsters.
Deepika’s classroom in Tambalahatti Village. (Specific photograph)
However the distance between her residence and faculty meant that each time her father needed to go to her, he needed to borrow cash and work on the moneylender’s farm. “He used to return and go to me as soon as each six months. He used to borrow Rs 500-1,000. After I realised that, I instructed him there was no want to return. Every time he visited, I used to examine his pockets to see if he had cash to return residence. After they gave me meals within the hostel or any sweets or cake, I used to cry quite a bit, questioning if my brothers had eaten or not,” Deepika stated.
After finishing Class 10, Deepika returned to her hometown and continued her training at Gnana Jyothi Schooling Belief’s college, a school about 7 km from her village. It was in 2019 that she obtained a name from Shikha Shetty, who’s now the supervisor of the nationwide blind girls’s group, asking if Deepika needed to take part in choice trials.
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The BCCI proudly congratulates the Indian Blind Ladies’s Cricket Group, who not too long ago gained the inaugural Ladies’s T20 World Cup for the Blind.
The complete group visited the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai on December 19 and have been welcomed by BCCI Hon. Treasurer Mr. Raghuram…
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 21, 2025
Deepika thought cricket may very well be a manner out of poverty. A well-wisher from her college days, whom she refers to as “Mohan anna”, helped her with funds to get to the choice trials. As soon as she made the lower, Samarthanam Belief for the Disabled took care of her. “My life modified after that,” she stated.
Samarthanam was additionally the organiser of the six-team World Cup, which was hosted by Cricket Affiliation for the Blind in India and co-hosted by Sri Lanka Cricket Affiliation for the Visually Handicapped. India beat Nepal by seven wickets within the closing in Colombo to emerge winners.
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Summing up the efficiency, BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia stated, “It was an amazing effort from Deepika and her group and I want to congratulate them for his or her sensible run within the match, which has made the entire nation proud.”