Sachin backing proves another step forward for women’s game
With the help of the ‘Little Master’, Alison Mitchell looks ahead to this year’s Women’s World Cup and beyond
Indian batting legend Sachin Tendulkar was this week announced as an ambassador for the ICC Women’s World Cup to be held in England this June and July. It is the first time the competition has featured an ambassador in this way, and there is much to like about the way the ICC have secured the most legendary name in the global game to help promote the event.
When I met Tendulkar at Lord’s as part of the ICC’s World Cup launch on International Women’s Day, I was keen to detect the depth of his knowledge of the women’s game. Was his interest a new one, brought about through agreeing an ambassadorial role, or has he genuinely kept an eye on the game for some time? It didn’t really matter either way, but his passion in the upcoming tournament needed to be authentic. Whilst I’m not sure he could name or recognise too many of the England team present at the event in the Long Room, it was clear he is passionate about the use of sport, and cricket in particular, as a tool for empowering women and girls.
“All of us should be encouraging our children to go out and play more,” he told the ICC. “Moreso a girl child. Normally the tendency is to get the boy out to play in the garden and do all sorts of sporting activities while the girl-child has to help her mother and do all the household things. I don’t agree with that. Girls should have the freedom to make their own choices. If we all get together to support and encourage them to do whatever they want to do in life, the results will follow.”
This year truly should be a landmark year for women’s cricket. The World Cup ought to be the most widely followed women’s cricket event in history, with the profile of the sport at its peak and social media giving the tournament a far greater reach than ever before. The recent Women’s World Cup Qualifying tournament in Colombo attracted an audience of 1.75 million to the live-streamed matches on the ICC’s website, exceeding the organisation’s original target of 1 million viewers. And, 17.65 million watched highlights and clips, while the ICC’s Facebook page did particularly well, with 4.7 million views of the last over of the final, when India’s Harmanpreet Kaur scored eight runs off the last two balls to clinch victory.
The ten televised games of the 2013 World Cup were watched in 150 territories. Ten matches are expected to be televised this time, but the ICC also needs to post video cameras at each of the non-televised games in order to capture the moments that happen away from the broadcast matches. They are missing a trick if they don’t. Expect comprehensive coverage and commentary from BBC Radio as well. The BBC has built on its coverage of women’s cricket every year since I travelled to the Women’s World Cup in South Africa for Radio 5Live in 2005 – the last World Cup to come under the auspices of the old International Women’s Cricket Council before the ICC took over the running of the game
Once the World Cup concludes with its final at Lord’s, the year 2017 will keep on giving. The best players will stay on in England to compete in the ECB’s Twenty20 competition, the Kia Super League. Six matches, plus Finals Day, will be televised on Sky Sports for the first time. BBC radio will cover every round of matches, upping the commitment it showed last year. The end of the domestic season will bring but a short break for England players, who will then travel to Australia to compete in the multi-format Ashes series, followed by the ever-growing Women’s Big Bash.
After revealing in The Cricket Paper in January that it was being considered, Cricket Australia has confirmed the Women’s Ashes series includes a Day/Night Test for the first time. It is scheduled between the three ODIs and three T20s that makes up the series – the same schedule that saw the Australian women, the Southern Stars, reclaim the Ashes on English soil in 2015. This time, however, all three of the T20s are stand-alone fixtures, as opposed to any double headers with the men. This is arguably more significant than the Day/Night Test, as it shows that Cricket Australia have confidence in their product and are willing to market Australian women’s matches as entertainment in their own right. This becomes increasingly important as the ICC World T20 2020 approaches, a tournament that will see the men’s and women’s events staged separately for the first time.
When the fixtures were announced this week, Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland commented that the schedule was “a result of a strategic decision to give this series the
This should be a landmark year and the World Cup ought to be the most widely followed women’s cricket event in history
opportunity to gain as much exposure as possible and continue to build women’s cricket as a mainstream sport as we look towards the World T20 in Australia in 2020, of which the final is just three years away.
“The decision to put the number one ranked team in the world in front of the Australian public across seven stand-alone fixtures was an easy one, ensuring they remain as accessible as possible to fans.”
The four venues staging the women’s Ashes matches are Allan Border Field in Brisbane, North Sydney Oval, Coffs Harbour in New South Wales and Manuka Oval in Canberra. All four venues are big enough to provide a sense of occasion yet small enough to create festival atmospheres if the games are proactively marketed and promoted. But key to a successful Test match will be a good pitch with some pace. The women’s Ashes will have its biggest ever platform and because of the importance attached to Test cricket in the men’s game, many opinions on women’s cricket will be formed based on what they see at the North Sydney Oval. Whilst criticism of the England team was warranted in 2015 after a poor performance in the Test at Canterbury, the reaction led to some disproportionate assertions about women’s cricket as a whole.
With the game still needing to advertise itself, a high-quality Test match under lights with extensive media coverage could be the biggest boon to the advancement of women’s cricket yet.