Sisters in Sweat: how a former Spurs player got 20,000 Indian women into sport

A dinner-party question, a Sunday kickabout and an idea that snowballed. Nine years on, Tanvie Hans and Swetha Subbiah have taken sporting sisterhood to 10 cities

On a breezy evening in 2017, as conversations flowed and so did the drinks at a dinner party, Tanvie Hans was asked an all-too-familiar question at the table: “Hey, can you teach me how to play football?”

For the Indian-born British footballer, who played professionally in England, it was an easy yes.

After a little planning and some back-and-forth messages 17 women – mostly friends and acquaintances – turned up for Hans’ first football lesson on a Sunday morning in the southern Indian metropolis of Bengaluru, eager to discover the joy of the sport.