Born to Tibetan parents and raised in the bustling heart of Mumbai, Jetsun Narbu Chee, knows a thing or two about standing out. For the 19-year-old, cricket has helped her find her place in a city where her Tibetan roots can set her apart in a crowd. “When I was younger, I just wanted to be ‘normal’—to look like my friends and avoid racial slurs. But my parents encouraged me to embrace being different. Cricket allows me to stand out because of my skill and dedication, not my ethnicity,” says the Kandivli resident who is currently the sole Tibetan-origin cricketer in Mumbai.

“When Jetsun stands tall in her white cricket gear, people don’t see her just as a girl with Tibetan roots, they see her as a cricketer, they see her as someone with the potential to play for India,” says her father, Narbu Chee. It was his support and a chance sighting of a woman cricketer on television that led to Jetsun eventually donning the whites. “I was sitting at home and watching a match with my father [in 2018] when I noticed someone on the field had a ponytail. I naively asked my father, ‘Do girls also play cricket?’” Jetsun tells Sunday mid-day. “At that point, I didn’t know any better, and the women’s cricket scene in India hadn’t really picked up.”