By the time England play Pakistan later today, they could already have qualified for the semi-finals of WWT20. If West Indies fail to beat India, England are through, even if they lose to Pakistan by a million runs. (Though they might still prefer to top the group and avoid a New Zealand semi-final.)

But if West Indies do beat India, England have to be careful – as we showed earlier, if Pakistan win it will all come down to Net Run Rate; and a Pakistan victory by as little as 12 runs could be enough to send them through at England’s expense.

Pakistan have played six T20s against England, of which England have won five and Pakistan just one; but there is an important lesson in the one game Pakistan won, back in 2013.

The teams played a “double-header” at Loughborough and England won the morning match at a cruise by 70 runs, with Sarah Taylor hitting a half-century and Charlotte Edwards also in good form, smashing 46 off 37 balls.

England then made two fateful selection decisions for the afternoon encounter – resting Taylor and dropping Edwards right down the order to No. 9. Chasing just 116, they suffered a late-order collapse (sound familiar?) and were bowled out off the final ball, falling one run short of Pakistan’s total.

In short, England underestimated Pakistan and paid the price – it is a mistake they can not afford to make again today!

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.

————
* 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.

South Africa have just won a famous victory over England in the 2nd ODI, thanks to the inspired selection of 16-year-old rookie Laura Wolvaardt; and later the fearless batting of Marizanne Kapp and Lizelle Lee, in a chase that looked like it was going to be an uphill struggle after the returning Danni Hazel had dismissed Trisha Chetty and Mignon du Preez in the space of two balls in the 33rd over.

The only South African to “fail” with the bat was du Preez herself who made 9… which was still one more than Lauren Winfield, Amy Jones and Sarah Taylor put together!

And let there be no doubt that this was a match England could really have done with winning. Moving towards the business end of the Women’s International Championship, they are now in very real danger of falling into a nasty scrap for 4th place, which will not be a fun position to be in come the reckoning.

So what should England do now?

The England of “yesterday” would have hit the big red button: Winfield would have been dropped down the order… and Jones would probably have been dropped off at the airport!

The England of “today” must resist this temptation. Assuming Katherine Brunt’s injury isn’t serious, they need to go into the 3rd ODI with exactly the same team, batting in exactly the same order, to exactly the same plan!

Or in short, in the immortal words of LCpl Jones: “DON’T PANIC!”

It won’t always come off – even Australia lose occasionally – but these are the best players we’ve got. They just need to know that the world believes in them, before they can start to believe in themselves; and the best way to achieve that is to do… absolutely nothing!

Although to be fair India were probably already heading towards victory anyway in their 2nd T20 against the Southern Stars, for the second time in recent weeks Messrs Duckworth and Lewis nevertheless conspired to produce a ridiculously unbalanced final run chase in women’s T20s.

After the Hobart Hurricanes were mugged by DL in their WBBL semi-final against Sydney Sixers, the equation for India chasing Australia’s 125 (off 18 overs) was even more bizarre.

When the rain came down, India were 52-0 after 7.5 overs, so the equation was 73 off 61 balls, or  7.2 an-over.

When the teams went back out again, the target had been reduced to 66 off 10 overs – i.e. a remaining 14 off 13 balls, equivalent to 6.5 an-over.

Just to reiterate… we’re not taking anything away from India, and you’d probably back them to chase down either target from the situation they were in; but still you have to ask, was it really fair that the required rate actually fell by half a run here?

Or to put it another way: if you had to chose between chasing 73 off 61 and 14 off 13 (in both cases with 10 wickets in-hand) would anyone opt for the former? Not in a million years!

It is abundantly clear that for short T20 chases, Duckworth Lewis is thoroughly broken and needs looking at, perhaps by reducing the number of wickets available?

A chase of 14 off 13 with only two wickets in hand, might have made it interesting! As it was, it was an utter forgone conclusion from the moment they went back out, and that’s just not an equitable reflection of where the game was when it was interrupted.

Whether or not you are the biggest fan of football, it’s hard to argue with its commercial success; and an important facet of this is the loyalty of fans to “their” team – a bond which quite literally spans generations: my son supports Arsenal because I do… and I do because my father does… and he does because his father did – the very idea of supporting anyone else is anathema!

This partly explains the massive (by domestic women’s cricket standards) crowds at the WBBL – several games have recorded over 1,000 spectators, which is probably more than the entire 2015 Women’s County Championship combined! Great marketing has helped, but the biggest factor is almost certainly people going to watch a team to which they already have loyalties via the (M)BBL.

(Anecdotally I’m told a similar thing happens in women’s football in this country – a large proportion of those who watch Arsenal Ladies are also season-ticket holders at Highbury Ashburton Grove The Emirates.)

So the answer to further growing women’s cricket in Australia – especially the 50 Over game – seems clear: get the same teams playing in the WNCL – giving the fans set of teams to follow and the media one set of teams to cover, with allegiances already embedded in the public consciousness via The Other Game.

Interestingly, official “Aussie Legend” Lisa Sthalekar notes that the players might also perform better playing and training with the same team-mates over a longer-term period than just the brief WBBL season:

“What I have noticed so far is teams predominately made up from their WNCL state squad with the addition of internationals seem to be fairing better than the Melbourne and Sydney teams [which aren’t].”

Could a “merger” happen, allowing the WBBL teams to compete for the WNCL? Legally, the answer is almost-certainly yes – Cricket Australia has been pretty canny in making sure that it “owns” the whole caboodle; so there wouldn’t appear to be any major obstacles, apart from perhaps the argument that 8 teams is one team too many, especially once (if?) you take the international stars out of WNCL.

(Whilst in England you would doubtless hear the argument that this was a “slippery slope” towards the “franchisation” of the entire men’s game; the Australians don’t seem to worry quite so much about that sort of thing?)

So it’s good for the fans… it’s good for the players… and it helps the media to build “the story”. It’s The Future™… and as we’ve seen with WBBL, Cricket Australia do The Future™ rather well – so bring it on!

Our colleague Martin Davies has taken some stick from the Guardian’s Cricket Correspondent Mike Selvey for asking how much the England women’s contracts are worth in financial terms:

With all due deference to Mr Selvey, we feel this is a legitimate question for one key reason – rumour has it that the Tier 3 contracts are not a full-time living wage. We should stress that this is only a rumour; but the fact that the ECB could if it wanted easily scotch such tittle-tattle but chooses not to, perhaps tells its own story? (After all, they seem happy enough for the men’s salaries to… um… “slip out“.)

Does this really matter? Yes and no! We certainly don’t have a problem with the concept of “part time” contracts, which require players to have “second jobs” as well to support themselves – this very web site is run and financed on just such a basis.

However we keep being told that England’s women cricketers are “full-time professionals”; and yet it is hard to be a “full-time professional” if your “full-time professional” job pays less than a full-time living wage.

So are the 19 really “full time professionals”? Until we know how much the T3 contracts are worth, the answer is that we genuinely don’t know… and that’s why it was a legitimate question to ask.