Kadambari Murali Wade (born 9 August 1975) the former sports journalist and former editor-in-chief of ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twi ...

India'', is the only woman to have held that post at the ''

Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media, an entity controlled by the KK Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia. It was founded by Sunder Singh Ly ...

''. She joined SI India in November 2010, to direct the revamp of the monthly magazine beginning with its January 2011 issue. Her articles largely focus on

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

. She is the youngest national editor of a major news outlet. The first ever winner of the Sports Journalists Federation of India's Cricket Writer of the Year award in 2006, in August 2007, She also broke the story of the formation of the Indian cricket board's (BCCI) plans to create what would later be called the

Indian Premier League The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men's T20 franchise cricket league of India. It is annually contested by ten teams based out of seven Indian cities and three Indian states. The leagu ...

(IPL) for cricket.

Life and early career

Wade was born in

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...

(now Mumbai) in August 1975, but settled with her family in New Delhi. She studied at Carmel Convent in Delhi's Diplomatic Enclave before studying at

Hindu College, University of Delhi Hindu College is a constituent college of the University of Delhi in New Delhi, India. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in sciences, humanities, social sciences and commerce. In 2022, it is ranked 2nd nationally by Nationa ...

for a BA (Hons) degree in political science. She worked briefly with the ''

Asian Age ''The Asian Age'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper with editions published in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. It also prints an "international edition" in London. It was launched in February 1994. The same publishing company also prod ...

'' in 1996, before moving to '' The Pioneer'', where she covered the environment,

gender and development Gender and development is an interdisciplinary field of research and applied study that implements a Feminism, feminist approach to understanding and addressing the disparate impact that economic development and globalization have on people based up ...

beats, reporting on

Earth Summit The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992. Earth Su ...

II from the United Nations in New York in 1997. From mid-1996 to 1998, she wrote one of India's first weekly web columns in a mainline daily, called "Surfer's Diary".

Sports journalism

Wade also wrote occasionally for the sports section, but became a full-time sports journalist only when she moved first to the ''Asian Age'' (mid-1998-1999) and then ''

The Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split be ...

'' (1999 to early 2001). In April 2001, she moved to the ''Hindustan Times'' to set up the Sunday team's section on sport. Subsequently, as part of the HT sports desk, she was an investigative sports reporter, and then as a writer, while covering cricket in eight countries. For forty-five days in Karachi, Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi-Islamabad and Peshawar during India's tour of Pakistan in 2004 saw her become a contributing author to a book on that tour. Her writing from this tour is also part of the course-work for Delhi University's first-year 'Fluency in English' curriculum.

Additional writing

Murali started writing a blog for The Moppet Show about the life and times of her daughter with special needs for The Mint, a collaboration between ''Hindustan Times'' and ''The Wall Street Journal''.

Recognition and awards

In 2005, at 29, Wade became one of the youngest sports editors in the country, when she took over as the sports editor of the

' Delhi edition. Two years later, she became the first woman to head sports in the paper's 85-year history, when she took charge as National Sports Editor, leading a team of over 40 full-time staffers and overseeing sports content for the print and web editions. She is largely considered to be the first woman to ever to be a national editor of sports in any major media. She was the first recipient of the Sports Journalism Federation of India's Cricket Writer of the Year award at the national sports awards in 2005, and also received awards for News Story of the Year in 2005 and 2006, both for cricket-related reportage. The team she led won over 10 awards for sports writing and content at various events in a three-year span. Wade has spoken on cricket on several panels, moderated the sports event at the ''

'' Leadership Summit (2009), been featured in news media in India, Pakistan, South Africa, the United States, Canada, England and Australia (both for her views on sport and for achievements in sports journalism) and is currently also working on two projects—a second book on cricket and a work of fiction. She was part of the Consultative Committee on Women and the Games ahead of the

2010 Commonwealth Games The 2010 Commonwealth Games (Hindi: 2010 राष्ट्रमण्डल खेल), officially known as the XIX Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Delhi 2010, was an international multi-sport event that was held in Delhi, India, ...

in Delhi, is a current member of the

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) is a non-governmental trade association and advocacy group based in India. History Established in 1927, on the advice of Mahatma Gandhi by Indian businessman G.D. Birla an ...

(FICCI) Sports Committee and is one of a group of women chosen by national broadcaster Doordarshan to issue public service messages to encourage Indian women in their careers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Murali, Kadambari 1975 births Living people Indian magazine editors Hindu College, Delhi alumni Indian women editors Indian editors Writers from Mumbai Journalists from Maharashtra Indian sports journalists 21st-century Indian women writers 21st-century Indian journalists Women writers from Maharashtra Women magazine editors Indian journalists