Shabina Jacob, former Kerala women’s cricket team captain, passed away on Sunday afternoon at 3 pm. She was 64 years old.
Shabina was the chairperson of the state women’s cricket selection committee. She was undergoing treatment for cancer the last several months in Vellore.
“I knew Shabina from the time she was a young girl in school. Her father Jacob was the sports director at the DPI (Director of Public Instructions) and many from my family belong to the sports fraternity. That’s how I knew her, as family friends. But later on when she joined the Women’s College and became a student of cricket, I was the coach. That was the first time we started a women’s cricket team in Thiruvananthapuram,” says M Ranjit Thomas, general manager, Kerala Cricket Association.
Shabina sits left most in the second row, in this old team picture of Kerala women's cricket
Shabina’s body was kept at the KCA office in Thiruvananthapuram for the public to pay their last respects and later taken to Kottayam, where her late husband rests. She leaves behind two sons.
“She had stayed away from cricket for a brief while, when she joined the State Bank of Travancore. I too was working there then. Before that, in college, she got selected to the Kerala state team and the Kerala University team, from the years 1977 to 1980. She’d also been captain at one point,” Ranjit remembers.
Shabina was an all rounder – she batted, she bowled, but most of all she fielded brilliantly. Ranjit used to tease her: “Do you have glue on your hands, how do the balls stick so much!”
Unfortunately Shabina played at a time the BCCI and the KCA had not recognised women’s cricket as part of it. “Women’s cricket association in Kerala was an independent body, a private body. It is much later that the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) and the KCA took women’s cricket under its wing. Shabina later became secretary of the Thiruvananthapuram district women’s cricket association and afterwards, she became secretary of the state women’s cricket association. She has been a motherly figure to the girls who joined. She started as a manager, taught the girls to play, and also became selector of various categories before becoming chairperson of the selection committee.”
Shabina (standing right most) worked as manager and selector of state women's cricket
Ranjit says he has never met another woman who has been so active in cricket for so many years. “She used to be involved even during her years at the bank, taking private leaves to make time for the girls. As a selector, she had to watch the matches too. She couldn’t be part of the last few selection trials but till her last breath, she was passionate about cricket.”