Ireland joined fellow “qualifiers” Bangladesh yesterday on the metaphorical “plane home” from WWT20 after losing to South Africa by 67 runs. Although both still have one match to play, neither can mathematically reach the semi-finals, sitting as they do at the bottom of their groups with no wins between them.

After triumphing in the qualifying tournament at the tail-end of last year, Ireland have found things more difficult in the “major leagues”. The closest they came to a win was against Sri Lanka, where they fell just 14 runs short of chasing 129.

Bangladesh meanwhile were thumped by India; then thumped again, only slightly less hard, by England and the West Indies.

However, it is important to note that neither side have on any occasion been humiliated. Ireland’s lowest total was a respectable 84 against rampant New Zealand; whilst Bangladesh’s low was 91 versus India – i.e. one more than India themselves made against England.

Overall it is an excellent platform on which to build for both Ireland and Bangladesh.

Although qualification for the 8-team 50-over World Cup in England next year looks like a bit of a mountain, the whisperings are that the next cycle of the Women’s International Championship might just be expanded to include them.

If so, it is something they have more than justified here; and would very-much prove that while they may be out… they definitely should not be down.

Mark Robinson made little secret yesterday of the fact that he wasn’t happy with England’s pedestrian victory against Bangladesh, telling the BBC:

“I thought we went backwards today… In the middle of the innings, you can’t settle for six an over. We’re better than that.”

But the evidence might suggest that England weren’t so much going backwards as continuing in the direction they’ve been travelling for a while.

Here are the T20 career Strike Rates for England’s leading batsmen – Sarah Taylor and Charlotte Edwards:

The red line is a “trend line” which shows the general direction things are going… and it is pretty clear that it is downhill. Not only that, but it is under the 100 marker these days in both cases – and nothing like the 130-140 to which Robinson aspires.

If there is one ray of hope for the future, it is in the rise of Heather Knight:

Here at least the trend is going uphill rather than down – perhaps supporting our suggestion a few weeks ago that Knight is the only England player to have made significant steps forwards in the past couple of years.

None of this means that England can’t win this WWT20; but if they are going to do so, they are either going to need to bat significantly against the trend, or bowl extraordinarily well.

But with even the on-message Edwards admitting yesterday that “there’s a bit of work we can do on our bowling” that is going to be tough, especially in conditions which might not entirely favour Shrubsole and Brunt, or even Hazell and Knight, who don’t get the turn that (say) Luus and van Niekerk will for South Africa.

There is an interesting comment on yesterday’s piece which suggests we were possibly overly fixated on Net Run Rate:

“England already have NRR advantage over WI. We only need NRR advantage over one of India and WI, not both. People seem to forget that. Of course, if England beat India on Tuesday, they will have four points, good NRR and probably only need to beat Pakistan to get through.”

This is a good point; and the focus must now of course be on winning against India so we can hopefully then easily qualify for the semis. But whether a Strike Rate hovering around 100 will be enough to beat New Zealand or Australia when we get there, is another matter!

England’s WWT20 campaign gets started later today, as they take on qualifiers Bangladesh in Bangalore, starting at 10am UK time.

Bangladesh are the lowest-ranked seeds in the competition – they were (narrowly) beaten by Ireland in the final of the qualifying tournament last December; and put to the sword by India in the opening match of the WWT20 earlier this week.

It almost goes without saying that this is a game England should win; but the truth is that they need more than a victory.

Although West Indies had a bit of a scare against Pakistan yesterday, the likelihood is still that this group will be a 3-horse race between West Indies, India and England; but with only two of those sides going through to the knock-out stages, there is therefore a fair chance that our old friend Net Run Rate will be making an appearance before we’re done.

With India having recorded a mammoth 72 run victory over Bangladesh, they are now in the driving-seat with a NRR of +3.6, so England ideally need to better that, either by bowling the Women Tigers out cheaply or by scoring a serious hatful of runs.

Sarah Taylor aside, England have not looked entirely convincing recently – scraping through their tour to South Africa with a pair of 2-1 series victories, where some largely forgettable batting displays were accompanied by fielding performances that they probably only wish they could forget!

But now is the time to put all that behind us. England have 5-or-6 absolutely world class players – Taylor, of course; Edwards and Knight who had massively successful WBBLs; and with the ball, Shrubsole (ranked #1 in the world in T20s) and Hazel (ranked #2); plus Brunt, who might not be quite the threat she once was, but who you underestimate at your peril.

Are England favorites for this tournament? Certainly not! Can they win it? Definitely… but they need to lay down a big marker from the off; and against Bangladesh today, nothing less than a crushing victory will do.

In an irony which we have reason to believe was not lost on our friends at the ECB, England’s top male and female cricketers found themselves promoting a campaign for gender equality less than 24 hours after flying to the T20 World Cup in somewhat less than equal circumstances.

The ‘Pledge For Parity’ hashtag which dominated Twitter on International Women’s Day was heavily promoted by the ECB; but while Joe Root and Eoin Morgan took a luxurious business class flight to India, Sarah Taylor and the women’s team were on a different plane… cramped up in economy.

It is important to note that the flights were paid for by the ICC not the ECB; and to recognise that this has happened against a background of the ICC having considerably increased their level of investment in this event, in terms of prize money and broadcast coverage.

Nevertheless, the ECB could have paid for an upgrade to the flights. Indeed, this is exactly what Cricket Australia did; with the Southern Stars flying ‘Business’* after pressure from the Australian government, which threatened to withdraw state funding from the game if more equitable travel arrangements were not provided for the men’s and women’s teams.

So should the ECB have followed Cricket Australia’s lead and provided the upgrades? CRICKETher accepts that these can be difficult decisions, and there is an argument that there are much better ways to spend the £30,000† it would have cost to even bump the players up to ‘Premium Economy’ let alone ‘Business’.

But at the very least, perhaps the ECB could use some of its much-vaunted influence at the ICC to see if something can’t be done about this next time, so that future ‘Pledges for Parity’ ring a little less hollow.

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* This piece originally stated that the Southern Stars flew ‘Premium Economy’ – this was corrected on 21/03/2016.
† Based on the list price, flying BA.