England have confirmed that fast bowler Katherine Brunt will miss the World T20 after she failed to recover from a flare-up of the back injury that has been plaguing her all year.

Brunt was originally injured playing for the Perth Scorchers in the WBBL, and there is a degree of feeling within the England camp that the Scorchers were not as careful as they might have been with their prize asset.

England nursed Brunt through the summer, and she played a full (and important) part for England in both formats against South Africa and New Zealand; but she began to creak during the KSL which followed the internationals, missing the Diamonds’ final match, and she hasn’t trained fully since, and bowled just 5 balls for England during the WT20 warm-ups before being unable to continue.

Having already had in mind that Brunt might not be able to play, England have come prepared with an alternative option to open the bowling – debutante left-arm spinner Linsey Smith might not be the most obvious like-for-like replacement, but she has opened the bowling regularly for the Southern Vipers/ Loughborough Lightning in the KSL and been pretty effective, with more powerplay wickets than any other England. bowler.

Brunt will therefore be replaced in the England squad by batsman (and gun fielder) Fran Wilson, meaning England have another option in the middle order if injury strikes or they feel they need it. Wilson will not however be available for England’s opening match on Saturday versus Sri Lanka, leaving a possible XI of:

1. Wyatt
2. Beaumont
3. Jones +
4. Sciver
5. Knight
6. Winfield
7. Dunkley
8. Hazell
9. Shrubsole
10. Ecclestone
11. Smith

The Women’s World T20 is less than a week away now – we are flying out to the West Indies on Thursday, with England’s first match against Sri Lanka coming up on Saturday. The competition is initially divided into two groups of 5, with the winners and runners-up going through to the semi-finals and final. Here are Raf’s predictions for Australia’s group – Group B. (You can read Syd’s predictions for England’s group – Group A – here.)

Aus­tralia

It goes without saying that Australia are far and away the favourites for the trophy. That’s nothing new, but the gap between them and the rest seems to be growing, not narrowing, given the strides they’ve made with payment of state players recently.

The issues they faced in last year’s World Cup in England, including an underwhelming pace bowling attack, have not entirely gone away. Megan Schutt’s dad may think that no one is within a cooee of Australia, but their real problem is finding a quick bowler who is within a cooee of Schutt (currently the ICC’s number 1 ranked bowler in T20s). Is newbie 20-year-old Tayla Vlaeminck the answer? I’m not convinced.

Australia’s real strength, as ever, lies in their mouthwatering batting line-up, which just keeps coming at you, especially now they’ve opted to drop both Meg Lanning and Ellyse Perry down the order, with Alyssa Healy and Ash Gardner doing the job of quick-hitting up top. With this likely to be a batsman’s tournament, it’s hard to see anyone standing in the way of Australia securing their fourth T20 title.

New Zealand

New Zealand’s performances in England this summer summed up their recent fortunes as a team: feast – breaking the world record with the bat on the first day of the tri-series – followed by famine, as they succumbed to England in both the T20 and ODI formats. Batting collapses are now their speciality, and they will need their middle-order to grow a backbone if they are to avoid the kind of disasters we saw in England, with youngsters Jess Watkin and Bernadine Bezuidenhout shouldering some responsibility. With Amy Satterthwaite facing her first World Cup at the helm, the hope is clearly that this will allow Suzie Bates (still the number 1 ranked T20 batsman in the world) to get back to her usual consistency with the bat. Ultimately, whatever their recent issues, there is just no discounting a team who possess (in Bates and Sophie Devine) the best opening partnership in world cricket, bar none.

In­dia

It’s been a difficult year for India since the excitement surrounding their appearance in the World Cup final at Lord’s, culminating in a revolt against their coach Tushar Arothe, who was recently replaced by Ramesh Powar. Unfortunately scapegoating your coach doesn’t tend to solve any underlying issues. For India the biggest of those is inconsistency, exemplified in the up-and-down showings of captain Harmanpreet Kaur, who suffered a poor KSL campaign though has recovered some recent form against Australia A. Much of their batting line-up, including Mithali Raj, are better suited to the longer formats; Smriti Mandhana, as Western Storm supporters will attest, is the key exception, and her performances will be crucial. Leg-spinner and number-2 ranked T20 bowler Poonav Yadav is also enjoying a good year. Overall, though, I can’t see them progressing beyond the group stages.

Pak­istan

Since taking home the “wooden spoon” at last year’s World Cup Pakistan have dusted themselves off and posted some historic results, including a maiden ODI win against New Zealand. They’ve undoubtedly got some good players and are fortunate to have Bismah Maroof, their best batsman, returning to the side after undergoing sinus surgery earlier in the year. Sana Mir, meanwhile, has recently been named as the number one ranked bowler in ODI cricket. Nonetheless their recent 3-0 thrashing at the hands of Australia shows just how far they have to go in the T20 format, and it seems unlikely that they’ll do well enough in a difficult group to reach the semi-finals.

Ire­land

Ireland’s chances of winning this tournament are best encapsulated in the bookies’ odds accompanying their campaign: currently 500-1. While the inclusion of Gaby Lewis and Lucy O’Reilly in the ICC’s Global Development Squad bodes well for the future, it’s telling that their best players – including WBBL “Rookie” Kim Garth – still rely on external opportunities to develop their game. While Ireland played in the 2014 and 2016 tournaments, they’ve never won a WWT20 match, and though it would be fitting for stalwarts Clare Shillington and Ciara Metcalfe (who have both announced they will be retiring at the end of the WWT20) to go out on a high, sadly it seems unlikely that they will break their losing streak this time around.

Predictions

Group A: England (winners); South Africa (runners up)

Group B: Australia (winners); New Zealand (runners up)

Eventual Winners: Australia

Outside Bet: West Indies

The Women’s World T20 is less than a week away now – we are flying out to the West Indies on Thursday, with England’s first match against Sri Lanka coming up on Saturday. The competition is initially divided into two groups of 5, with the winners and runners-up going through to the semi-finals and final. First up, Syd previews England’s group – Group A – and makes some predictions; then check back here later for Raf’s preview of Group B and her predictions.

England

The 50-over world champions have high hopes of adding the other global title to their trophy cabinet, following on from a successful summer where they beat South Africa and New Zealand in both limited-overs formats, setting down a marker at Taunton where they posted a T20 world record 250-3 against South Africa. Coach Mark Robinson surprised everyone by naming 3 debutantes in his squad, and he may well need them as he sweats on the availability of Katherine Brunt, who is fighting to be fit for the start of the group stages. If Brunt is unfit, expect one of those debutantes – Linsey Smith – to be thrown straight into the deep end to open the bowling against Sri Lanka on Saturday. Even without Brunt, however, England will be expected to make the semi-finals, and they will be bitterly disappointed if they don’t go at least one step further too.

South Africa

It has been a mixed 12 months for the Women Proteas since they came within a cats-whisker of making the World Cup final in 2017. They ran-in last in the Tri-Series with England and New Zealand over the summer, and against the West Indies last month, having drawn the ODI series 1-1, they looked to be on-course for a T20 series defeat at 2-0 down with 2 to play. But they dragged themselves back against the Windies, with Lizelle Lee finding some form and Laura Wolvaardt hitting her maiden T20 half century, adding to the impression that, despite a slightly shallow batting lineup, they are a better side than their results over the English summer suggested; especially with Trisha Chetty (who missed the summer and autumn internationals) and Shabnim Ismail (who missed the West Indies tour) both returning to the fold. Will South Africa win the WWT20? Probably not – being thrashed by Pakistan in the warm-ups was not a good omen! But could they still win it if everything falls into place? Absolutely!

West Indies

Although they are the holders, their disastrous World Cup in England last year, including being bowled out for 48 by South Africa, has led many to write the West Indies off for this tournament, despite home advantage. However, they beat England in an unofficial warm-up last week, and their best players – Stafanie Taylor, Deandra Dottin and Anisa Mohammed – are still top, top performers. The star of the 2016 WWT20 final – Hayley Matthews – hasn’t quite lived up to her potential in the intervening 2 years, but she is only 20, so she has time-and-a-half on her side. Their group stage match against South Africa on Wednesday could well be their de facto quarter-final which determines whether they go on in the competition.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka have played 19 T20 internationals in the past 2 years, and have won just 4 of them, and it would be little surprise if they failed to add much to that statistic in the West Indies. They do have one weapon that the other “no hopers” don’t – a genuinely world class player in Chamari Atapattu, who has WBBL and KSL experience on her side – and if she fires they could pull off an upset (singular); but upsets (plural) would be a surprise.

Bangladesh

The highest-ranked of the non-ICC Women’s Championship sides, Bangladesh look like rank outsiders; but then they also looked that way in the Asia Cup earlier this year. In that tournament they shocked India with a 7-wicket win in the group stages, and then went on to repeat the feat in the final, restricting a pretty-much full-strength India to 112, and then making the runs with two off the final ball to celebrate the biggest day in their cricketing history. Since that day they have also won the qualifying tournament in the Netherlands to earn the right to be here, and the news that they are due to be added to the ICC Championship after 2021 will be a further fillip for the up-and-comers, for whom holding their own here will be a victory in and of itself.

Predictions

Group A: England (winners); South Africa (runners up)

Group B: Australia (winners); New Zealand (runners up)

Eventual Winners: Australia

Outside Bet: South Africa

A new report [here – PDF] from the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations – the international branch of the English Professional Cricketers’ Association, the Australian Cricketers’ Association, and their equivalents throughout the cricketing world – surveys the growing professionalisation of the women’s game globally, concluding that although “huge strides” have been made recently, there is much work still to do.

The report worries that Australia and England are pulling away from ‘the rest’ as the game moves into a professional era, and that this needs to be addressed.

As FICA Board Member Lisa Sthalekar writes in her introduction:

“For the game to excel at a global level and allow players to play on an even playing field and ensure competitive balance, minimum standards need to be enforced in terms of playing opportunities and pathways.”

The report states that there are only around 120 fully professional players globally – essentially, the nationally contracted squads of Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and the West Indies (ie. the ICC Championship sides, less Sri Lanka) – with about a further 200 semi-professionals on top of that, playing in the WBBL/WNCL and KSL.

Interestingly, the report therefore calls out the fact that players in Australia’s domestic comps continue to fall short of the mark required for them to be considered full time pros – i.e. not needing secondary jobs to carry them through the year. Despite repeated claims to the contrary – e,g, this piece on ABC News from 2016 “NSW Breakers become first fully professional women’s team in Australia” – the reports concludes that WBBL/WNCL offers “a reasonable semi-professional base wage” but not a fully professional one!

However, the report also acknowledges that this far exceeds the situation with the only other semi-professional domestic competition anywhere else – the Kia Super League:

“With 6 teams and 15 contracted players per team the KSL does provide earning opportunities for those below national level but not sufficient to avoid the need for supplementary income or dual careers.”

The report then goes on to also damn the KSL for “inconsistency in facilities, pitches, coaching standards, and accommodation provision” albeit acknowledging that there are current proposals to address this via The 100.

Overall the report concludes that most (89%) of the players surveyed remain optimistic about the future of the game, but bearing in mind that the players surveyed were largely members of FICA-affiliated associations, this is perhaps a little misleading – they are mainly the lucky ones playing international cricket, not those toiling away unpaid in the lower reaches of the domestic game.

For them, the report challenges the game to do better – to move away from insecure, short-term contracts; and to invest in improved coaching and medical support, better playing facilities, and extended welfare and education support.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, FICA advocates that part of the solution is improved player representation – it is after all their raison d’être! But it genuinely is worrying that in England for example, only the centrally-contracted England players have such representation in the form of the Professional Cricketers’ Association. If the PCA don’t want them (and the evidence suggests they don’t) then a “Semi-Professional Cricketers’ Association” would be a powerful voice for a somewhat marginalised, yet very significant group – KSL (and down the road, The 100) couldn’t happen without them – perhaps it is time they looked to themselves to leverage that power?

KSL break-outs Sophia Dunkley, Kirstie Gordon and Linsey Smith have been called up to the England squad for the Women’s World T20 in the West Indies next month. All are selected on form but the inclusion of three debutantes in the 15-player squad is nevertheless a massive surprise for a major tournament, and a departure from England’s usual policy of safety first, with big names and World Cup winners axed to make way for the new faces.

Middle-order batsman Sophia Dunkley won the County T20 Cup this season with Middlesex, after having had an outstanding winter with the England Academy; and then followed that up by impressing in the opening round of the Kia Super League for Surrey Stars – scoring 66 off 43 balls versus the Vipers at Guildford.

Kirstie Gordon – a left-arm orthodox spinner – is a former Scotland player from Aberdeenshire, who made the decision 2 years ago to pursue her cricketing career in England when she accepted a place at Loughborough University. She was the leading wicket-taker in both the Women’s County Championship for Notts and the KSL for Loughborough Lightning this year.

Linsey Smith – another left-armer – also had a good KSL season. One of the leading wicket-takers in KSL01 for the Vipers, despite only being drafted in late as an injury replacement, this year Smith transferred to the Lightning, where she took 11 wickets at an Economy Rate of 6.4.

The only other semi-surprise in the squad is Tash Farrant, who has made a swifter recovery than might initially have been expected from the broken collar-bone she sustained fielding in a KSL match at Loughborough this summer – she makes the squad as fast bowling cover for Katherine Brunt and Anya Shrubsole.

Missing out are World Cup winners Alex Hartley, Laura Marsh and Fran Wilson, as well as all three of England’s 2017 debutantes – Alice Davidson-Richards, Katie George and Bryony Smith; plus four others from the contracted squad – Georgia Elwiss, Kate Cross, Freya Davies and Beth Langston.

With Sarah Taylor not travelling to the West Indies, Amy Jones will take the gloves for England, with Tammy Beaumont as backup.

Possible 1st Choice XI

1. Danni Wyatt
2. Tammy Beaumont
3. Amy Jones (wk)
4. Nat Sciver
5. Heather Knight
6. Lauren Winfield
7. Katherine Brunt
8. Dani Hazell
9. Anya Shrubsole
10. Sophie Ecclestone
11. Kirstie Gordon

Full Squad

• Heather Knight
• Tammy Beaumont
• Katherine Brunt
• Sophia Dunkley
• Sophie Ecclestone
• Tash Farrant
• Kirstie Gordon
• Jenny Gunn
• Dani Hazell
• Amy Jones
• Nat Sciver
• Linsey Smith
• Anya Shrubsole
• Lauren Winfield
• Danni Wyatt

Martin Saxon Reports

TEAM HONOURS

* Both clubs awarded trophies as winners of the respective Western and Eastern Divisions

Other Team Award

Tea Cup (Best matchday catering): Ashton-on-Mersey

Oakmere retained the Cheshire Women’s League Championship after losing just one league match. Curiously, their only reverse came in a cross-divisional fixture against second division Stockport Trinity – Oakmere were victorious in all matches against teams in their own division. Appleton maintained a strong challenge for a long time and hit the top spot as late as early August, but crucially they then lost to Oakmere for the second time. Ultimately though it was Oakmere who prevailed thanks to their wealth of bowling options and their ever-reliable key batters. Many of Oakmere’s wins were by large margins, and their second win over Chester Boughton Hall in early September was perhaps their most eye-catching performance, however Oakmere also had to rely on their winning knack in other closer fixtures, such as their first games against both Chester and runners-up Appleton.

Stockport Trinity were convincing winners of the second division and will be back in the top flight in 2019. Their dominance was such that not only did they have little difficulty with the opposition from their own division, they also won their cross-divisional fixture against division one champions Oakmere. Their only defeat came against Appleton on the final day, when the trophy had long since been secured. After a difficult start, Leigh finished strongly to finish second, in a season where all the sides in this division, bar Trinity, appeared to be fairly evenly matched.

Upton won Division Three West, ahead of Nantwich. In what was their first season of competitive cricket for both, the two clubs can look back with pride on what they achieved. Both clubs scored convincing wins on the opening day and went on to dominate this division throughout. However, thanks to two wins over Nantwich by margins of six runs and three wickets, it was Upton who finished in top spot.
Fielding a second team for the first time, Appleton’s second string held off Woodley’s challenge to finish as champions of Division Three East. Appleton did the league double over Woodley, but Woodley remained in contention until the very end, given that they beat Upton and Nantwich in cross-divisional matches, while Appleton’s seconds were beaten by both of these clubs.

Stockport Trinity and Appleton were undoubtedly the strongest teams in the shorter form of the game this year. The two clubs were unbeaten champions of the Western and Eastern divisions respectively, and also progressed largely untroubled through the Knockout Cup, although Trinity were pushed all the way by Didsbury in the semi-final. This all meant that Appleton and Trinity would meet twice on Finals Day, and it was Appleton who prevailed on both occasions – by margins of four and eight wickets – and who went home with both the Knockout Cup and the T20 Divisional trophy.

Upton and Nantwich not only dominated Division Three West, but also made it through to the final of the Development Knockout Cup, the cup competition for Division Three clubs. Upton beat their rivals once again, this time by 17 runs, to complete their own double.

INDIVIDUAL HONOURS

Other Individual Awards

Cheshire Women’s County Club Players’ Player of the Year: Kate Coppack
Cheshire Women’s County Club Coach’s Player of the Year: Dawn Prestidge
President’s Award (Outstanding Contribution to Women’s Cricket in Cheshire): Ray Bell (Stockport Georgians)

Emma Barlow had another consistent season at the top of Appleton’s order, and duly won the Division 1 Batting Award for the leading run-scorer for the sixth year in the last 10. She also took home a fielding award, indeed the number of fielding and wicketkeeping awards won by members of the Appleton first and second teams suggests that it was not just their batsmen and bowlers who contributed to their successes this year.

Perhaps the most convincing winner of any of these awards was Lily Scudder, who made five half-centuries and finished with almost twice the runs total of her nearest rival in Division Three West. Her twin sister Charlie won the bowling award in the same division, also with something to spare over the chasing pack.

The following were all league records broken this season:

• Wickets taken in division 1 (Lorna Starkey, 22)
• Wickets taken in all competitions (Nathalie Long, 33)
• Fielding dismissals in league matches (Emma Barlow, 9) – previous record equalled

OTHER SEASON HIGHLIGHTS

Didsbury reached the regional final of the National Club T20 and were only three runs away from a place in the national Finals Day.

The League XI beat MCC for the first time:

MCC 178 (Annie Rashid 3-21, Molly Price 3-33, Liv Bell 2-32)
Cheshire Women’s League XI 179-9 (Carys White 86*, Ali Cutler 26, Roshini Prince-Navaratnam 24)

This is a companion piece to Raf’s feature piece for The Cricket Monthly, ‘When women stormed the citadel’.

20 years ago this week, on 27 September 1998, MCC members took part in the most important vote in the club’s history. At last, after a campaign that had lasted a decade, the necessary two-thirds majority in favour of accepting women as members was achieved.

Two decades down the line, I spoke to two of the MCC’s female members to find out what has changed in the interim period: Saba Nasim, a Chance to Shine cricket coach from East London and currently a Probationary Member, and Danni Warren, MCC and Middlesex Head of Women’s Cricket.

Q: When and why did you decide to apply for MCC membership?

“I heard about being a member a few years ago, but just never got round to filling in the form. It wasn’t until about 2 years ago, I think it was 2016, I found out that one of the guys at my club [Wanstead] was actually a committee member. I asked him the process and he said ‘yeah I can nominate you if you want’. I’ve played at quite a lot of clubs anyway and I enjoy meeting new people, playing different levels of cricket.” [Saba Nasim]

“I’ve been a member for about 8 years. I first joined when I was playing a bit more cricket. I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed playing MCC cricket. You get to play some very different cricket: I’ve played some two-day games against the Young Cricketers in the past, down to playing against a school who really hadn’t played much cricket up until 6 weeks before we played them. You get some very good experiences playing against different players. I spend a lot of my time now trying to convince other people trying to do the same!” [Danni Warren]

Q: Do you feel accepted as a woman within MCC?

“Yes, definitely. The matches I’ve played and the people I’ve met, they’ve always been for the idea that women should be part of MCC. Everyone’s been very welcoming and we had a lot of fun on the recent MCC Women Belgium tour – I can’t wait to go on the next one. MCC matches are really fun games, they’re competitive but they’re also all about the Spirit of Cricket which I really enjoy. I’m a coach as well so I always try to get that in the kids, you should play hard but you should play fair and enjoy yourself, so I really enjoy those games. They’re a little bit different to the club games and the county games I play, in that they’re a little more fun and there’s a social aspect to it as well.” [SN]

“I never really felt at all daunted, or as if it was something that was that big a deal when somebody gave me a form. It was just another opportunity to play more cricket. I knew a lot of members and therefore I wanted to play a bit more cricket with them. Part of my job now as MCC and Middlesex head of women’s cricket is about membership growth – trying to encourage more female members, especially playing members. The MCC men will play 500-odd matches a year, versus the 25 that the women play. Fewer people will find themselves on the receiving end of an MCC match than would do in the men’s game and therefore we’re trying to increase the exposure that we can get. The more members we get, the more games we can play.” [DW]

Q: Can more be done to promote female membership?

“At the moment MCC is quite a white club, but people are starting to realise it doesn’t have to be. If you have someone in each club that knows how to join, we’ll definitely get many more members from diverse backgrounds. It’s still quite a lot of white women playing, but it’s definitely changing. Women’s cricket as a whole has changed, we’re getting different communities involved in the sport now, we’re making women’s cricket accessible for them.” [SN]

“From what I’ve found, speaking to people in the last year or so, it’s awareness of the role that MCC play as a club. Women that play cricket aren’t necessarily aware of it, whereas men tend to grow up with it in the background, or they’ve been part of a game where MCC have played their club or played their county side or something that they’ve been able to see. In the women’s game there’s not that awareness – we’re trying to increase that.

Part of my job is running the new women’s Academy based at Lord’s – the idea is to bring talented players that are in or close to first team cricket through, and give them opportunities to progress up the pathway. It’s been really successful, with a large number of the players playing first team cricket or getting into KSL sides. They are encouraged to and have already played in some MCC matches. A number of them have signed off membership application already or have played as guests in matches. Very much a by-product of it is we want more players who are in the county system at present being able to play as playing members to join the club, to play our matches against schools and clubs and leagues, and to be able to help grow the game.” [DW]

Sarah Taylor will miss the forthcoming Women’s World Twenty20 in the Caribbean, the ECB have revealed.

A mutual decision was made by both the player and the management staff with the welfare of the player the top priority.

Taylor missed England’s tour of India earlier this year, as well as one Super League group-stage game for her side Surrey Stars, as the ECB have sought to manage her ongoing anxiety issues.

Coach Mark Robinson said: “Since the end of the summer Sarah hasn’t been able to train fully with the squad due to not being as fit as she would want to be from a psychological point of view.”

“At the moment she isn’t in a place where we would all be comfortable that the demanding training, playing and travel schedule wouldn’t potentially put her backwards and make her road to full recovery longer.”

“It’s important we see mental health in a similar way to a player with a physical injury. You wouldn’t risk a player if you felt that playing them with an injury would increase the chances of them being out for a long time or the issue even becoming career-threatening.”

Taylor will continue to train at Loughborough during the tournament.

The full England squad is due to be announced next Thursday at Lord’s. This news suggests that Amy Jones, as second choice keeper, will now definitely be in the side, with presumably Tammy Beaumont as back-up.

With 2 rounds played this weekend, perennial champions New South Wales sit at the top of the WNCL ladder, despite a dramatic opening-day loss to Queensland. Queensland put themselves in a great position, bowling NSW out for 149, only for Rene Farrell to knock-over their entire top order in a remarkable 5-wicket opening spell which left Queensland 18-6. But Queensland recovered thanks to 50s from Sammy-Jo Johnson and Josie Dooley to win the match with just one wicket remaining!

Normal service was restored for NSW the following day, as they smashed Tasmania for 344 – Rachel Haynes and Alyssa Healy both hitting 80s – and then bowled them out for 158 to grab a double-dose of bonus points.

This was after Tasmania, under new coach Salliann Briggs, had got their first points on the board in almost 2 years on Day 1, thanks to Player of the Match Corinne Hall, who hit 86 off 98 balls as Tasmania successfully chased ACT’s 218 all out to win by 5 wickets.

For South Australia, Tahlia McGrath hit 105 as they posted 251 versus Victoria, but McGrath’s efforts were trumped by Meg Lanning’s 120* as Victoria chased the runs in under 40 overs for the bonus-point win that puts them 2nd.

There was better luck for South Australia the following day, as Bridget Patterson became their second centurion of the weekend, hitting 109 against Western Australia, who were then bowled out for 205, with 3 wickets apiece for Megan Schutt and Amanda Wellington.

With everyone getting a win on the opening weekend, it’s all to play for when WNCL resumes in… er… November – yes, you read that right – without the internationals, who will be in the West Indies (along with us!) for the Women’s World T20. Then we have to wait until February for the final round of games, prior to the top two playing off in the final on February 9.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we weren’t invited to the trials for The 100 that took place this week at Loughborough and Trent Bridge; but enough information has dripped out to get a good idea of where things are going with the ECB’s new competition.

As the ECB are discovering, cheap slogans and simple promises don’t necessarily translate easily into actual workable solutions. The problems begin with the very concept of “100” – a number of balls which it turns out isn’t divisible by 6, and so can’t be slotted neatly into traditional 6-ball overs! So… let’s have 5 ball overs… but that means more changes of end… okay, so let’s have 10 ball overs… but that would lead to fast bowlers getting injured… okay so let’s have 5 or 10 ball overs, according to whether the batsman’s mother’s maiden name ends in a “Y”?

Not quite as simple as it sounded in the blue-sky marketing meeting, is it?

Other ideas floated around – cutting the “red tape” of LBWs and/or PowerPlays – have gone nowhere, because it turns out there were actually quite good reasons for these laws after all, and scrapping them would have a lot of negative externalities – scrap LBW and I’d give it 5 minutes before batsmen started taking advantage and using their pads deliberately to protect the stumps; scrap the PowerPlay and you’d have 9 men on the boundary before you could say “Howzat?”!

So it looks like what we will end up with is exactly like cricket… but with a more complicated “overs” system (possibly not even called “overs” but “fives”) which they will try to mask by having a big scoreboard count down from 100 – even though they HAVE to keep some concept of overs (/ fives) to control how many balls each bowler can bowl and from which end they will be bowled, because counting actual balls would obviously be a nightmare!

What a farce!

And yet… for all the nonsense… there will be an upside – the fillip in visibility that will come as the media latch on to Something New™, as they did with the KSL; the Free-To-Air TV numbers that will dwarf those that have sat behind Sky’s paywall for a generation; the families that will come for the fireworks in the sky and stay for the fireworks on the field.

There will be more opportunities for players too – especially the fringe players, with two additional rosters to fill. So the players are on-board, because it offers them more – more cricket, more visibility, more fame… and more money!

And at the end of the day… as I’m not the first to say… it’s still cricket – swingers will still swing; spinners will still spin; and batsmen will still bat.

And we’ll be there to watch, like we always are.

Because it might be nonsense.

But it’s all the nonsense we’ve got.