Mandira Bedi, who worked in the first-ever Indian daily soap Shanti in 1994, is not only known for his acting skills but is also a well-known cricket presenter. The actress recently revealed how she bagged the anchoring job. She also remembered the setback her acting career suffered after she became a sports presenter.

During an interview with Curly Tales, Mandira Bedi shared, “In 2002, India beat England and made it to semi-finals of a tournament called the Champions Trophy… Now, because I love cricket, I decided to travel to Sri Lanka to watch the match. So, I booked a ticket for myself and reached there…” She said that when Sony employees saw her there, they became interested in finding out why she had paid for the tournament herself. “At that time, they were flying down celebrities to watch the cricket, and I came but bought my own ticket. They just had me at the back of their mind as someone who really likes cricket.”

She further added, “So, when they wanted a female anchor for the 2003 World Cup, they just called me randomly. As soon as I reached there, I had a bunch of people shooting cricket questions at me, I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ They asked me, ‘Would you be interested in hosting the cricket World Cup? I was like, ‘Would I be interested? Yes!’ But it wasn’t as easy as that. There were three auditions, and over thousand other women auditioned for this gig.”

Mandira said that she eventually stopped receiving acting offers since her popularity as a hostess grew.

The actress shared that she was only getting offers for anchoring jobs and MC jobs and everybody forgot that she was an actor and she had earlier done eight years of acting. She also stated that after the gig, even if she got any acting role, it would always be about being an anchor and playing a cricket commentator or a cricket presenter. She said, “You have forgotten, but I know acting, I am an actor. I started my career as an actor.’”

She struggled as a host in addition to the decline in acting roles. Mandira shared she wasn’t allowed to read people’s comments. “We didn’t have social media, where you could see people’s comments at that time. We did have internet, but not like now. Sony kept me away from all this. They said, ‘You are not allowed to know what people are saying’. They shut all that out for me. What I did learn from the cricket time is that there’ll be people who like you in life and then there will be people in life who won’t like you. So the ones who like you, be grateful about them and the ones who don’t, don’t try and please them,” she said.