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FFive years ago, in an Australian boardroom, Kevin Roberts, the current CEO of Cricket Australia, scratched his chin and suggested that it might be time to host the Men’s and Women’s Twenty20 World Cups as separate entities. From that core came the idea that Australia should attempt to fill the Sydney Cricket Ground for the final of the T20 Women’s World Cup in 2020. A couple of years later, the aspiration grew again, the SCG became the MCG and the hashtag #FilltheMCG. It seemed like a huge undertaking, some would say downright pointless: Lord’s sold out by the final of the 50-year-old Women’s World Cup 2017, but it has a capacity of just 30,000. The MCG is the largest and most cavernous cricket ground in the world, so the stakes were enormous – nothing says a wet squib like lonely levels of empty seats.
The weather also threatened to ruin the match, the rain swept through the first semi-final (and England’s chances). Australia would have been eliminated if their semi-final had been abandoned, after Cricket Australia’s last appeal to the International Cricket Council for a reserve day was rejected, but the clouds opened at the last minute and after much running by staff of land, Australia won a thriller against South Africa.
And so on March 8, 2020, International Women’s Day, 86,174 spectators, not the largest crowd ever for a women’s sports contest (90,185 in the 1999 soccer World Cup final), but a Nobody cared, they lined up and frolicked in what now seems like surprisingly carefree abandon. outside the CGM. Katy Perry, resplendent in shocking pink, landed her punches before Megan Schutt and Harmanpreet Kaur took their players onto the field. It was child’s play, Australia won by a whopping 85 runs with series player Beth Mooney with six strokes of 78 before India was eliminated by a measly 99.
It was the highest attended men’s or women’s T20 game in history, the most people to watch a women’s cricket match in history, the highest-attended women’s sports match in Australia, choose your preferred statistic. Fifty-three million saw it on television and one billion on ICC digital channels. In the back, Sunil Gavaskar again asked BCCI to start a women’s Indian Premier League. It seemed that touch paper had been turned on in women’s cricket. But something was brewing that would change much more than the course of a sport.
Four days later, the MCG announced that a member of the crowd who attended the final had been diagnosed with Covid-19. Twelve days later, Australia closed its borders, stranding newlyweds Lauren Winfield and Courtney Hill, and Winfield’s teammate in England, Amy Jones. On March 23, the British government sent its Stay at Home order. England’s captain, Heather Knight, signed up for the NHS volunteer service.
The sport closed, cricket closed and what emerged from the confinement is a hierarchical beast. The game is skint. Clare Connor, managing director of women’s cricket, who will be announced as the next president of MCC in June, admits that men’s cricket may take priority to fill the coffers. South African and Indian women’s tours canceled. The Hundred is canceled, and Alex Hartley tells the media that he may be “stacking toilet rolls at Tesco” by late summer. In June, 25 players sign regional retention contracts to help with funding, and in July, the club’s cricket reboots with fears about the cricket ball as a disease vector finally ruled out. The new national competition, the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, comes to life in late August, with each local team broadcasting the matches live.
The ICC announces that it has postponed the Women’s World Cup, to be held in New Zealand in the spring of 2021, for one year. Knight, the most educated of England’s captains, shares her disappointment on Twitter: “Pretty gutted to be honest. I know there are tough decisions to be made right now and it would have taken a lot of work (and money) but it was doable in New Zealand. Hopefully this is not an excuse for the tables to put women’s cricket on the back burner for the next 12 months without a toilet to prepare for. “
Netflix, which has sustained many during the shutdown, releases Beyond the Boundary, a brilliant, ICC-approved action documentary about the T20 Women’s World Cup.
Women from the West Indies sportively agree to tour pandemic-affected England in late summer and live in a bio-bubble. The five-game series is one-sided, but in a post-Covid sports world where women’s sports, from women’s soccer academies to internationals, have been hit the hardest, it’s a timely push. Sarah Glenn, the young leg scorer, is the series player with seven wickets at 12 and Deandra Dottin of the West Indies is the leading run scorer on both sides.
Elsewhere, only New Zealand and Australian women play international matches. The women of South Africa and Pakistan will return in January when they play three one-day internationals and three T20s under the African sun. Meanwhile, Indian women play just four matches in BCCI’s T20 Challenge tournament since the start of the pandemic, while Indian men have reveled in an IPL of 60 matches and a full tour of Australia, including three ODIs. , three T20 and four Tests.
Finally, as December approaches, the ECB announces that 41 players will be awarded professional contracts, postponed from the preseason. And the Women’s Big Bash ends the year as the fourth most watched league in Australia and the only major league to increase its viewing hours in 2020.
As always with Covid, the poorer and less established teams have fared worse. But for women’s cricket, which has come this far in the last 10 years, the survival of only the fittest is not good enough.
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