Why KSL has to lift profile of women’s game
The editor of Cricket Statistician analyses recent events
Who are the stars of women’s cricket? Meg Lanning’s tenth ODI hundred, scored for Australia against New Zealand this week, gives her a claim to be at the top of that pile, with the previous best, Charlotte Edwards, having retired with nine.
Charlotte played 191 matches, while Meg has played only 57. No man has scored ten ODI hundreds as quickly in terms of games, and her ODI average of 52.37 is matched by very few men. She is also the most highly rated player in the Women’s Big Bash League, a genuine superstar of the women’s game
For a historical comparison, over 23 matches between 1973 and 1982, Rachael Heyhoe Flint averaged 58.45. Among current players only Mithali Raj of India, who averages 51.03, comes close though her total of 5,614 runs places her behind only Charlotte Edwards, who retired last year on 5,992, on aggregate.
Last November, Amy Satterthwaite of New Zealand scored three consecutive hundreds against Pakistan, with another against Australia in February, but Satterthwaite has only six hundreds to her name.
West Indies, the World T20 champions, can offer Stafanie Taylor, who averages 44.42 and can throw in 114 wickets as well, at one time topping both batting and bowling ratings.
So, importantly, the stars are there. But where is the women’s game going? Women’s Test cricket has almost disappeared and Lanning has played only three Tests, all against England.
That is three-fifths of all the women’s Tests in recent years, with the other two being between England and India and India against South Africa. But then in the women’s game, historically, games of more than two days are rare.
The English County Championship is of 50-over matches, and the most popular so far of women’s formats has been that of the Women’s Big Bash in Australia, which, of course, is played in a T20 format.
The Kia Super League (KSL) in England is as much as anything intended to give cricket of a higher standard than has been seen in domestic women’s cricket before, where the problem has been that the domestic level is too low and makes the breakthrough to international cricket therefore particularly difficult.
Played last year as a sixteam T20 competition, the idea is to introduce a 50-over format later. Meg Lanning missed the 2016 competition through injury but should be there for somebody in 2017. Importantly, people came in some numbers to watch the games, where the women’s county championship had never progressed beyond friends and family as spectators.
It needs TV coverage, even if only online. That should come, perhaps more likely in 2018 than 2017. But things are moving the right way.