New (female) storylines

a defining moment for women's sport

Simon Hughes writes:

Sixty thousand people attended the Arsenal women’s champions league semi-final with Wolfsburg on Sunday – beating the previous record for a game of women’s football in the UK by 11,000. The attendance the last time Arsenal played a Champions League semi-final at home, (10 years ago) was 1,406. Not only that, but the day before 58,000 attended the women’s six nations denouement between England and France at Twickenham. Another record. 

We are at a defining moment for women’s sport, partly inspired by the Lionesses. I watched them train during the Euros last year. The skills, the passion, the dedication, and the fitness was fantastic. I watched my daughter Nancy play for Durham University recently and also accompanied her to Chelsea women’s Champions League quarter-final with Barcelona. It was an epic game that went to penalties.  The standard and ability of women’s football has gone up fivefold in the last two years.  Its folly to compare it to men’s games. Its fabulous in its own right.

Women’s cricket is the same. Nancy played for Middlesex throughout her teenage years and was in the England academy. With an excellent basic technique and a good understanding of the game, she was head and shoulders above most of her female peers and comfortably held down a place in her Emmanuel (boy’s) school 1^st XI. But, partly through The Hundred (and before that the Kia Superleague)  women’s cricket has also evolved massively in the last two years. You’ve got daredevil players like Alice Capsey and cool, clever young bowlers like Lauren Bell and Izzy Wong as well as the outstanding Sophie Ecclestone, who Jack Leach admitted to me, has a better bowling action than he does.

There are now 100 professional women’s cricketers in England and so many burgeoning talents, and opportunities for women to play and work in cricket. Finally, we (as a game) are starting to properly involve and encourage the ‘other half’ of the population. This, actually, will be English cricket’s salvation, rather than tinkering with the county championship or bleating about Free To Air coverage or elitism any of the other gimmicky things we have indulged in.  Hence we have launched a women’s cricket podcast – Storylines presented by Gloucestershire player and BBC commentator Melissa Story and Nikki Chaudhuri of Surrey who is also a presenter on Sunrise radio.

Matt Griffiths writes: -

In the first episode, Melissa and Nikki get stuck into notable performances in the Rachael Heyhoe-Flint (RHF) Trophy. Melissa highlights the incredible run-scoring feats of Paige Schofield highlighting her incredible form since moving to the South East Stars from the Southern Vipers. 2 hundreds in the first 3 matches of the season means Schofield has scored more runs in 2023 for the Stars than the entire 2022 season at the Vipers. Story explains that the increased professionalism of the RHF means batters in the middle order are growing in quality illustrating that remarkably Schofield became the first player ever to score a hundred batting positions 5 and 6 in the RHF trophy. Melissa and Nikki interviewed two current English pros – Rhianna Southby and Charlotte Taylor - of the Vipers to find out how their lives have changed by the onset of professionalism.

The increased all-round talent of squads or “total cricket”, as it has been referred to, was what drove England’s male side in their white ball revolution and The Analyst suggests this is one of the ways England’s women will have to look to challenge the dominant Australian side arriving for the ashes in June. Currently vying for the position of best of the rest in Women’s international cricket is the strong Indian side buoyed by the success of the inaugural Women’s Premier League. Nikki Chaudhuri brought great insight while discussing which Indian players have been awarded central contracts from the BCCI. Notably, the omission of Shikha Pandey has raised eyebrows, a player, as Chaudhuri highlights, who has considerable experience playing for India and is also coming off the back of a strong WPL performance.

Finally, the discussion moved to the current women’s international matches between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Despite knocking over hosts South Africa in the opening match of this year's T20 World Cup, Sri Lanka are a seriously under-supported team. Their charismatic captain Chamari Athupathu plays a bold and attacking brand of cricket and Melissa highlights that she was a definite miss in the WPL draft. Athupathu is also without a Hundred side and with certain Australian players choosing to give this summer’s competition a miss, both Chaudhuri and Story agree the door should be opened for talented cricketers outside the “big three” nations of England, India and Australia.

Calls for support from the big 3 to support other cricket associations are nothing new in both men’s and women’s cricket but Melissa highlights that without that support the only thing that suffers is the entertainment and competitiveness of the cricket itself. England’s winter tour to the West Indies is a gloomy example of what is to come if action isn’t taken to support cricket in less wealthy parts of the world.

Interest in the women’s game has never been higher with nearly 1.4 billion people viewing digital coverage of the T20 Women’s World Cup this year. To continue to explore the growth of the women’s game with in-depth analysis and interviews follow Storylines: The Women’s Cricket Show and The Analyst Inside Cricket

Follow @storylinespod on twitter and instagram and get in touch with feedback and questions you’d like to see discussed by Melissa and Nikki.