Women’s game breaking new ground
With sellout crowd expected for Sunday’s World Cup final growth of sport clear to see
LONDON— The women’s cricket teams from England and India will meet Sunday for a World Cup title at a place that not so long ago shunned female players. Lord’s, the London ground often referred to as the “Home of Cricket,” is expecting a sellout crowd for the final — another breakthrough in a tournament full of them.
For the first time since the Women’s World Cup began in 1973, the players have received daily expenses equal to those provided for men in International Cricket Council events, and the visiting teams flew to England for the tournament in business class, as has long been the norm for men.
Prize money has increased to $2.5 million, 10 times the figure for the previous tournament, which was held in India in 2013. The competition, which started among eight teams on June 24, has attracted a global television audience of more than 50 million, an 80 per cent increase from 2013. And then there are more than 26,500 tickets that have been bought for Sunday — a record for a Women’s World Cup match. It is also about six times the old high mark (4,426) for any women’s match at Lord’s.
“It has made tremendous strides,” said Enid Bakewell, a former member of England’s team who was the leading run-scorer in the inaugural Women’s World Cup. “It’s moved on phenomenally because we’re being treated more as equals — but not completely yet.”
The first World Cup fell short of the necessary number of teams, so the field had to be padded with an International XI (a group of players who missed qualifying for the other squads) and a Young England squad. None of the teams in1973 came from the subcontinent, where men’s cricket is most popular, and the com- petition was so in need of publicity that Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, England’s captain, wrote reports for newspapers. Lord’s would not agree to stage any of the matches.
“I had to work part time to get time off to play cricket,” said Bakewell, who was a swimming instructor. “During the tournament I wasn’t being paid, so I’d go without hairdos and makeup when I was playing.”
A generation later, Clare Connor, a former star for England who is now the head of women’s cricket in the country, made her first international tour, through India in 1995. She and her teammates received no match fees and had to pay £500 ($817) toward their airfare and accommodations. The athletes also had to buy their own uniforms, and they played in skirts instead of the practical trousers that today’s teams wear.
Connor recalled getting scars on her knees from diving. “It was a bit weird,” she said. “It didn’t feel athletic.”
By 1998, the all-volunteer association that ran English women’s cricket merged into the men’s England and Wales Cricket Board, opening up funding that meant free uniforms (and a farewell to the skirts). Seven years later, the International Women’s Cricket Council and the International Cricket Council became one. Only since then has the Women’s World Cup been held at regular four-year intervals and gained secure funding.
In 2013, Australia became the first country to provide full-time contracts for leading female cricketers, and the top players there are now paid over $100,000 per year. Other countries have since done the same, though the deals are less lucrative.
Perhaps most significant has been the growing interest in women’s cricket in India, the economic powerhouse of the men’s game. In 2015, India introduced national contracts for its elite players, becoming the last of the top eight women’s teams to do so.
Now, India is in its second World Cup final, after defeating Australia, the defending champion and the winner of six of the previous 10 World Cups, in a thrilling semifinal Thursday at the County Ground in Derby.
Speaking before the match, Mithali Raj, India’s captain, said she hoped that the team’s success would galvanize support for the women’s game in India.
Raj made her international debut in 1999, and as a teenager, she said, she did not even realize there was a national women’s team. “It’s not the same for the current generation of young girls,” she said. “A lot of young girls in school are taking up the sport.”
Raj knows what a victory over England on Sunday could mean. “It would be a revolution for women’s cricket in India if we go on to win the World Cup,” she said. “It would be a real big thing. We’d be in a better position to promote the game and create a brand value for women’s cricket.”
For the International Cricket Council, the interest in this year’s tournament has increased optimism about the organization’s ambition for equal pay between the sexes within 15 years.
“The quality has been the highest we’ve ever seen,” said David Richardson, the council’s chief executive. “It has more than justified the ICC investment in prize money, and our aspiration for parity is unwavering.”