Mala Sundareshan

Mala Sundareshan, Director, Children and Teen Programs, The Art of Living & Former Indian Cricketer 

Mala was a player in the Indian Women’s Cricket team between 1994-96 and represented Karnataka from 1985-2002. She was the Woman of the Match for the 3rd ODI against Australia in 1994. She was Captain of the Karnataka Women’s Cricket team for more than 9 years, Captain of the South Zone team for 3 years, and Captain of the President’s Eleven team. She received the Ekalavya Award from the Government of Karnataka in 1994 for her contribution to cricket. She has coached Karnataka State Women’s Cricket team for many seasons. She is currently coaching the Arunachal Pradesh Women’s U-19 team.

Having played cricket at the highest level, Mala knows how to balance studies and hobbies, compete, lead, and set goals and achieve them.

She also found time to complete her Bachelor of Architecture while playing cricket. In addition, she was a graphics trainer for Architecture students at Bangalore University for many years.

From 2004-2014, she ran 10 low-cost English medium schools for 4000 slum children across India – 6 schools and 1 junior college in Hyderabad, 1 school in Bangalore, and 2 in Kolkata. She designed and set up hygienic, mechanized and economical kitchens to feed the children of these schools, which catered to more than 8,000 children per day. She introduced professional training in sports, music, dance and martial arts. She designed and conducted training programs for school teachers to enable them to become sensitive to children, understand their minds, improve teaching methodology and classroom management.