Women's Cricket and Coronavirus - A Hefty Blow?

To say that women’s cricket is on an upwards spiral is an understatement.

Earlier this year, close to 90,000 people crammed into the MCG to watch the Women’s World T20 Final on international Women’s Day, smashing all previous attendance records. Over 9 million watched the game on TV in India alone and around 1.2 million Aussies also tuned in.

But due to COVID-19, many are fearful that this momentum could be lost.

The pandemic has dealt cricket a heavy blow, with matches having to be rescheduled or cancelled altogether and budgets being scaled back.

And whilst we’ve seen men’s cricket return in force, with England contesting a white ball series against Ireland and test series against Pakistan and the West Indies, we are yet to see any of the major women’s cricketing nations go head to head.

With both South Africa and India pulling out of tours to the UK, we could see no international women’s cricket this English summer.

Furthermore, the 2021 Women’s World Cup has been pushed back a year, despite host country New Zealand being declared ‘Covid-free’ and all teams set to follow strict quarantine on arrival.

Many female stars have expressed concerns about the decision, with England cricket legend Heather Knight nervous that it could become “an excuse for boards to put women’s cricket on the back burner for the next 12 months”.

What perhaps makes the decision more frustrating is the fact that next year’s Men’s World T20 is yet to be postponed, despite hosts India having almost 3 million COVID-19 cases at the time of writing.

But it’s not just international women’s cricket that’s suffering - it’s the domestic game too.

This year was set to be the launch of the Hundred, a franchise competition made to rival the IPL and the Big Bash, and a huge step forward for the women’s game in the UK.

For numerous uncontracted female cricketers in the UK, the Hundred would be a way of forging a career playing the game they love and for more established players it was a chance to show their skills on the global stage and a earn a lucrative sum of money.

However, the Hundred was yet another cricket competition to be cancelled this year- a further googly that COVID-19 has bowled the women’s game.

The Women’s T20 Challenge, also known as the Women’s IPL (Indian Premier League), was also postponed, but has been rescheduled to November, meaning it will clash with the Women’s Big Bash (WBBL) leading to anger and frustration in the cricketing community.

In a world where there are few high-quality domestic competitions available for female cricketers, having two major tournaments needlessly scheduled alongside each other is unhelpful at best, highly damaging at worst.

Numerous stars took to social media to express their frustration about the decision.  It must be said that it seems like a needless setback for the women’s game that could’ve been easily avoided with more cooperation between the Australian and Indian cricket boards...

Although it may seem like all doom and gloom, there have been some positives for women’s cricket over the past few months.

ASICS have recently launched the first ever cricket shoe designed specifically for women. It’s scarcely believable that Alyssa Healy, who helped launched the shoe, has scored almost 4,000 international runs in shoes that weren’t even designed for feet like hers!

A new domestic 50 over competition has also been launched in the UK this summer, based around 8 different regions.  This is a huge win for the women’s game, as earlier this year, it seemed unlikely that any domestic cricket would be played in the British Isles .

In addition, the ICC formed an unlikely partnership with Netflix to deliver a documentary about the hugely successful World T20 that took place earlier this year, providing a huge amount of visibility for the women’s game on a streaming platform used by millions worldwide.

We can only hope that as the world recovers from coronavirus, we see more of these positives and less of the negatives for women’s cricket, so it can continue to develop and flourish.

***

Thanks again for reading and for your comments - stay tuned for more and feel free to share with any fellow cricket lovers.