England must curb Kaur to rule world and spark revolution
Final can lead to major growth in women’s game Indian hit seven sixes in epic semi-final century
England Women have played at Lord’s before – and have won World Cup finals there twice, the first in 1973 when the inaugural World Cup was staged – but neither of those occasions sparked a spectacular growth in women’s cricket.
A victory against India tomorrow in front of a capacity crowd might, however, bring about an enduring legacy. Women’s cricket worldwide has evolved in the past decade from amateur to semi-professional to professional – and if there is any parallel with men’s cricket when it went through the same stages of evolution, the future is not only bright but guaranteed to succeed.
Firstly, though, England have to defeat India and their star batsman Harmanpreet Kaur, who played the innings of this World Cup – and perhaps the finest innings by a woman outside Test matches – when hitting an unbeaten 171 off 115 balls in the semi-final and knocking out Australia.
Kaur’s sustained hitting took the women’s game to a new level – one which will persuade spectators to watch many more matches in future apart from World Cup finals.
Just as in men’s cricket before it became professionalised, scoring rates and totals were low because the bad ball was not always dispatched; and the bad ball has to be hit to be “good cricket”.
Kaur dispatched Australia’s bowling all right, with much the same backlift and followthrough of her idol Virender Sehwag in hitting seven sixes. It was the same silky wristwork as that of her captain Mithali Raj – who scored 71 when India beat England in their qualifying game at Derby – but with a physicality born of Kaur’s Sikh parentage.
It has been batsmen who have made the men’s game evolve, by raising the bar, with bowlers then finding an answer. Thus WG Grace learned how to play forward with bat and pad together, and bowlers had to bowl quicker in response and force batsmen to play off the back foot.
In the semi-final of this World Cup between England and South Africa there was one bouncer, by Moseline Daniels of South Africa, and that was pitched so short that it bounced too high and was called a wide. But this is the next stage of the women’s game: to produce bowlers fast enough to force the likes of Kaur back, starting tomorrow perhaps.
Of England’s opening bowlers, however, Katherine Brunt is now 32, while Anya Shrubsole has been fighting injury. Or maybe the future of women’s cricket lies in being a front-foot game, without the threat of violence and fatal injuries.
If India bat first tomorrow – and three of the past four World Cup finals have been won by the side batting first – and set a large target, England will need substantial scores from Natalie Sciver, the only batsman to score two centuries in this tournament, or Sarah Taylor. They are the only two batsmen, from any country, to have aggregated 300 or more runs in this World Cup at a strike-rate higher than one run per ball, apart from Kaur.
Both Sciver and Taylor are a delight to watch, more aesthetically pleasing than the modern male batsmen because they are intent on timing the ball, and as much to the off side as to leg, not power-hitting which is usually leg side. As a wicketkeeper, Taylor’s footwork is so athletic and glovework so neat that I would like to update my Favourite Alltime XI: I chose Bob Taylor, of Derbyshire and England, recently but I have come to prefer his namesake.
But Sarah Taylor, besides giving to spectators so much pleasure, has known such mental-health torment as few cricketers have done – as documented on these pages.
And it is greatly to the credit of her coach, Mark Robinson, as well as herself, that she has played every match of this World Cup to date. The key for any coach is to get the best out of his best player, and Robinson has done, which bodes very well for his future career.
The growth of the women’s game faces one specific problem, whether or not England win: the hard ball, even though it is slightly smaller and half an ounce lighter than the men’s.
To popularise the sport in this country, something else is needed in addition to role models such as Heather Knight and her team, and the funding from the England and Wales Cricket Board: a semi-hard ball that can he used on any surface. If cricket then becomes the game of inner-city girls, many of south Asian origin, its future as England’s No 1 summer sport is assured.