Isa Guha on breaking barriers, the debt to Shane Warne and finding her voice
She’s become one of the voices of the Australian summer, a trusted and knowledgeable source on all things cricket. But Isa Guha also wants a better future for women and girls in the sport.
Isa Guha’s first steps in the sport she deeply loves have almost become a metaphor for her cricketing career.
Having got out cheaply to “revered” older brother Kaush in the long, thin backyard in Buckinghamshire that perfectly modelled a cricket pitch, Guha would be left bowling uphill into the wind at the crate masquerading as a wicket “for the rest of the evening”.
The young girl running in with feisty ambition went on to become the first Asian woman to play cricket for England, when still a teen, and has been running into the wind ever since - challenging convention and breaking barriers as often as she did stumps in a storeyed career that included Ashes and World Cup wins.
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A star of the Fox Cricket stable, Guha has become one of the voices of the Australian summer, a trusted and knowledgeable source on all things cricket - and one of the sport’s entertainers.
It was an almost accidental career path though for the woman who passed up an Ashes tour to concentrate on studying for her high school A-Levels before balancing her international cricketing duties with studying neuroscience.
FORK IN THE ROAD
Guha has long been a visitor to Australia, with her stints including two seasons at the Bankstown Cricket Club ahead of England’s successful women’s Ashes tour of 2008 and then victorious World Cup bid in 2009.
“I spent some time at the Brain and Mind Research Institute here in Sydney, and one of my flatmates in London was at King’s College studying a PhD in neuroscience,” she said.
“I found a PhD that I really wanted to do (in England). In the mornings, I would go to Lords, do all my training and then I’d head off to the Royal Free Hospital and spend the rest of the day till 10 o’clock at night just doing my thesis.
“It was amazing, but it was also not sustainable. And so at some point on that journey, I decided to retire from cricket but I have no regrets about that.”
She was headed down a professional path as a scientist but the media opportunities that had come her way in the final couple of years of a decade-long international career continued to present themselves and Guha jumped in headfirst.
“When I retired, I started getting more and more opportunities, not just in the UK, but in India and the Caribbean, in Australia - and I just rolled with it,” she said.
Guha’s drive to be the best she can be in anything she tackles took over and she soaked up experiences like a sponge, eventually getting to a point where she had to start making decisions about who she worked for given the demand she was in.
“I came over here, did Triple M, it was a lot of fun and then the Fox gig came along,” she said of the Aussie network with which she will call the action for an eighth summer this year.
SUPPORT THE KEY
Just as she was an outlier to a certain extent in her cricket career, following her brother to their local club to play in a team that didn’t have a great deal of diversity, it was the support she received that helped Guha be comfortable in the uncomfortable, something she attempts to do for others now through her charity Take Her Lead - an organisation designed to advance equity and diversity in cricket and to increase participation for women and girls.
“I was the only girl in a boys team, and the only girl of an Indian heritage in a team of British white boys and Pakistanis, and for (my parents) not to be concerned about that meant that no one else was,” she said.
It’s something that she carried into the broadcast world, where she was often the only woman in the room and aware of not “stepping on toes”.
But the relentless work ethic that carried her through her playing career and studies, willingness to respect those that had come before her and ask for their advice and eventually the championing of her by others, meant she became a media force.
“Certainly, at the start, I felt like I couldn’t make any mistakes whatsoever because then (audiences) would just be targeting all women in broadcast basically,” she said.
“But then as you move on your journey and become more established, people are a bit more forgiving of you making mistakes, unless it’s an absolute howler.”
ISA AND WARNIE
One of her greatest champions was Aussie spin king Shane Warne.
“That relationship was just the biggest confidence boost to me as a broadcaster,” she said.
“Not that I didn’t have support before, but it was just purely the fact that it was Warnie.
“He really embraced me as a broadcaster. He’s asking my opinion, he’s rating my opinion - and as soon as you have his respect, it’s, it feels like you have everyone’s because he is the king.”
Warne’s support of Guha as a commentator, rather than just a host or special comments analyst bolstered Guha’s own belief and she remains “so unbelievably grateful” for her time in the commentary box with him before his untimely death in 2022.
“To get inside his brain, there will never be another (cricketing) brain like it,” she said.
“I guess I’m bringing my science hat on here. It’s fascinating when you lose someone and all we have now is the memories and you can never access that brain again, which is why you’ve got to appreciate it while you have it.”
TAKING STOCK
Having turned 40 earlier this year, it’s been a time of reflection and reassessment for Guha, a modern day nomad who spends three months of the year in Australia and can be away from home in England for long periods of time.
“It’s really important to reset every now and then and just to think about where you are, what you’ve done, and I’ve never really had a chance to do that since I was 16 (and debuting for England),” she said.
“It’s been six years since my mum passed, and this year has really allowed me a chance to sit down and think about where I am, where I want to be, and what life is all about, basically.”
The loss of her mother Roma - a woman whose unwavering support, life example and stoicism in the face of challenge, inspired Take Her Lead - before the shock deaths of friends and colleagues Warne and Andrew Symonds in 2022, was a reminder of the shifting nature of life.
“Nothing will ever stay the same. Everything moves, everything changes, evolves, grows - and I think if you know that, then you can appreciate the moments when you’re in them so much more.”
THE FUTURE
Unlike when Guha started playing, cricket is now a genuine career path for women, some of whom have the potential to earn $1m a year between Australia’s WBBL, India’s WPL, England’s The Hundred and national team contracts.
But there’s still a place for Take Her Lead, Guha’s passion project, on which she still spends around 20 hours a week.
Making cricket a comfortable and welcoming space in which girls and women can thrive is of paramount importance for Guha.
“The work that we’re doing is still necessary, because I always look at these things as a journey when it comes to under representation and minority,” she said.
“Girls and women at recreational levels are still experiencing the same things that we were 20 years ago.”
Addressing those drop out rates, diversity levels and acceptance is what Take Her Lead will continue to work on into the future.
It’s a future that Guha will continue to assess but as she prepares to spend a 16th summer in Australia, it’s odds-on that it will continue to involve cricket Down Under, especially with audiences rating her among the sport’s top commentators.
“I think if your intentions are to be the best you can be, and to help get the best out of others around you, then that’s a good place to start from,” she said.
“It’s important to have fun in what you do and to really enjoy it and as long as that’s happening, then I will always continue.”
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Originally published as Isa Guha on breaking barriers, the debt to Shane Warne and finding her voice
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