LONDON: At the age of nine, Salma Bi first picked up a cricket bat, handmade for her by her father, and taught herself to bowl after watching hours of cricket on television. But despite their enthusiasm for the sport, convincing her parents to let her play cricket at a more serious level was not easy. “In the beginning, I felt as if I was on my own. I used to come home after practice and my parents would say, 'Why are you always out so late?', or they would complain because I'd been out all Sunday playing a match,” she says. “Sometimes they would say I couldn't go, and I had to miss training. But when I signed for Worcestershire and started bringing back trophies and medals, they realised I was good at it. Now they're really proud of me.”

One of nine siblings, Bi was born in Pakistan and moved to Birmingham with her family when she was a toddler. Now 24, she plays for Five Ways Old Edwardians at club level, and is the first British Asian player to be selected for Worcestershire county. For more than a year, she has been recruiting teenage girls and young women from Birmingham's Asian community into her weekly female cricket coaching sessions, and last year her initiative to bring young Asian women into cricket won her an outstanding achievement award at the Change4Life British Asian Sports Awards (BASA). This year, she narrowly missed out on the BASA coach of the year award. “Asian boys think Asian girls can't play cricket; they think we're only good at cooking. But I've watched cricket as much as my brothers have, and I want to see more Asian girls take up cricket competitively to show they can do it,” she says. “I'm proud of Asian girls who go against the norm. If there are more of us taking up a competitive sport that's normally seen as a man's game, it will change the way people look at us. It proves we are capable.”

Although it attracts a fraction of the coverage of the male sport, with the World Cup quarter finals kicking off next week, women's cricket isn't a new phenomenon. England's women's team has played internationally for years and its success has been phenomenal, dwarfing the achievements of the men by winning the World Cup in 2009 and losing the Ashes this January for only the first time in six years.

But although women's cricket is increasingly gaining recognition, there is only one British Asian female player in the England squad, the talented Isa Guha, a statistic that Bi feels isn't representative enough of a generation of British Asian girls who have “grown up with cricket in their blood”.

With 543 cricket clubs in England and Wales running women's and girls' teams, the English Cricket Board is confident that it is only a matter of time before more female players of Asian background emerge at national level, pointing to 18-year-old Raveena Lakhtaria, who has just been selected for the England Women's Academy team, which nurtures players with the potential to play nationally.

“It would be great to see more Asian women playing cricket at every level,” says Guha. “There isn't a traditional background of Asian women playing sport, but that's changing. Cricket is a sport girls can play and be successful in irrespective of their background.”

Twelve young women turn up to Bi's weekly sessions. It is just about enough to put a team together, but she is constantly looking for more girls to join. “The youngest in my coaching session is 14, the oldest is 33. Some are married, some have kids, but most have never played cricket before, though they know the game from watching it at home, in the way Pakistani families do. For most of them, playing cricket is a way to get out and not just sit in the house.”At one training session, Bi demonstrates how to perfect a forward drive while some girls waiting for their turn in the nets talk about who they are backing for the World Cup. Meanwhile, Bi's sister Aanisha, 14, is itching to bowl, tossing a cricket ball impatiently. Aanisha plays for a girls' team at Warwickshire county cricket club, and is one of Bi's coaching success stories.

Single mum Anjum Gul, 26, is also a member of Bi's cricket group. She took up cricket as a hobby, having always wanted to play when she was younger.

“I've always had a passion for cricket because of my family; everyone watches it. My brothers and nephews always played cricket but even though I wanted to, I wasn't really encouraged by my family. Now that I'm a mum myself, my family doesn't mind at all; my mum looks after my four-year-old so I can go to training.”

Bi understands how difficult it is to convince parents to let their daughters play — last year, she convinced a men's team to take her on as their only female player, but did not tell her family.

“I knew my dad wouldn't approve. But I wanted to do it because I wanted to prove myself. I was a bit worried that my family would find out I was playing with men, but no one knew. I asked to join the team because I wanted to set myself a challenge. At the beginning, I could tell the other guys on the team didn't take me seriously, but once I started to play, the men started to respect me and they treated me no differently. I ended up playing for them all season.”

Now Bi also meets with reluctant parents to convince them to let their daughters play. “I know at least seven Asian girls who used to play alongside me but then had to pull out. I do what I can to persuade them, such as taking responsibility for picking them up for training and dropping them home. I don't want them to have to miss out.”

Bob Walpole, one of Bi's cricket coaches at Old Edwardians, says he has seen many talented Asian girls give up cricket because of family pressure. “It's the grandparents more than the parents — they assume the girls should stay in the house. But really, they have nothing to worry about. Clothing isn't an issue, as it is for them in other sports, and it's not a contact sport. In many ways, it's a better sport for Asian girls to take up.”— Dawn/ Guardian News Service