With England’s squad for the women’s Ashes due to be announced very soon, speculation has already begun as to who we might see in England’s starting XI come July 21.

Perhaps one of the biggest questions is whether we will see any players from outside of the contracted 18 included in the squad.

This might seem unlikely given that those 18 are, by definition, perceived to be the best players in the country, and that their opportunity to train regularly far exceeds that of any uncontracted players.

On the other hand, England’s tour of New Zealand this winter didn’t exactly go to plan (whatever anyone says about England “winning both series”, they would certainly have been expecting to win all 3 Championship matches. Winning 1 wasn’t a brilliant result.)

And the selectors showed in picking Sonia Odedra for the Test squad last August that they are prepared to look outside of the 18 when a player has shown consistent form in both Academy games and in the county championship.

On that basis, if they were to look outside of the contracted players, you’d have to think that there would be one player in particular currently on their radar: Middlesex’s Alex Hartley.

Alex Hartley

The 21-year-old left-arm spinner is one of the few players in either the England or the Academy squads to survive the past winter with her reputation not just intact but enhanced.

In the England Academy’s recent one-day matches against Australia’s Shooting Stars in Dubai, she finished as the leading wicket-taker, with 10 wickets at an average of 19.30 across the four games.

And you can’t argue with Hartley’s recent form for Middlesex. It’s not very often that you see a bowler bowl two successive maidens in a Twenty20 game, as Hartley did against Surrey in the inaugural Pemberton Greenish Cup game.

It’s been a tough few years for her. Having originally been selected for the England Academy when she was just 15, she was dropped soon afterwards, being told that her batting and fielding needed to improve.

Her recent selection in the winter Academy tour was her first recall to the side for six years.

Last summer she spent her weekends commuting from her home in Clitheroe down to London, having moved from playing for her home county, Lancashire, to representing Middlesex. She felt that playing for a Division 1 team would give her the best chance of playing for England.

Might that chance finally come this summer against the Australians?

When CRICKETher spoke to Sarah Taylor during England’s Ashes warm-up match against Hampstead CC on Sunday, she told us:

“[Games like this are] good practice for us. There’s people moving in and out of the squad and it’s a good opportunity for them to come and show us what they’re about.”

Could Alex Hartley – the only non-contracted player present at that game – be the one “moving in”? At the very least, it seems that the other players take the possibility seriously.

Though I suspect Hartley would only get a game against the Aussies if other players fall injured, it would certainly be refreshing to see her name in the squad. The selectors need to keep one eye on the future, and players like Alex Hartley are that future.

The ongoing England A v England B 4-day warm-up match in Loughborough provides significant clues as to how England plan to line up in this summer’s Women’s Ashes.

Openers It looks like England’s preferred opening partnership might be Heather Knight and Lauren Winfield, with Charlotte Edwards dropping down to 4. Personally, I’m not convinced about this – Edwards’ “play every ball on its merits” approach is perfectly suited to the opening role; while Winfield’s attacking shot-making can really only be justified opening in T20, and even there it is debatable, because while Edwards doesn’t tend to do the spectacular, she does the unspectacular so well that even when she is accumulating, she accumulates more quickly than most.

Middle Order With Taylor coming in at 3 and Edwards at 4, this leaves just one space in the middle order, which you’d expect to be occupied by Kent’s Lydia Greenway. If she fails in the ODIs, then perhaps Amy Jones (who is reported to have batted beautifully making a century at Loughborough) is an option for the Test, but only “if”.

All Rounders Despite making another duck in the warm-up match, to go with the two GOLDEN quackers she has bagged in this year’s Women’s County Championship, Nat Sciver’s place is bolted-down for the foreseeable future. Joining her, I’d expect to see Laura Marsh, who offers good, solid batting cover in the late-middle-order, and the ever-dependable Jenny Gunn; although Georgia Elwiss, who is one of just two players to come out of the last winter with her reputation genuinely enhanced (the other being Alex Hartley) is another option here.

Fast Bowlers It’s pretty clear that England still see Kate Cross as the back-up to Shrubsole and Brunt. I think Cross’ batting has something to do with this, because although she has made 50s in the Women’s County Championship, at international level she is seen very much as a “Genuine No. 11”; so barring injuries, it seems unlikely that Cross will play in the ODIs. But the real question is whether England can risk injury-prone Katherine Brunt in a four-day Test match, however well she is bowling? If not, that is where opportunity is likely to come knocking for Cross.

Spinners With Heather Knight offering a classy enough turning ball to open the bowling recently in T20s, and Laura Marsh filling an all-rounder slot, you have to ask if England even NEED a full-time spinner, and whether playing Cross in the remaining slot might not be a better option? Nevertheless, I’d be surprised if England take the field without one of Dani Hazell or Becky Grundy. Grundy was the one in the driving seat more recently, but Hazell has been working hard on a more attacking, wicket-taking approach so I wonder if it is her we’ll be seeing more of this summer?

The XI? The Women’s Ashes is still two months away, so a lot of water is going to flow under a lot of bridges between now and then. Nevertheless here’s the XI I think England are looking to go with:

Knight, Winfield, Taylor, Edwards, Greenway, Sciver, Marsh, Gunn, Hazell, Brunt, Shrubsole.

Each of the 8 WBBL teams will be able to select a maximum of 3 overseas stars.

We’ve chosen 24 of the world’s top “overseas” players below… so which 3 would you pick for your WBBL team?

Australia’s Women’s Big Bash League, which will take place next December-through-January, will cap teams to a maximum of 5 “star” players.

Domestic cricket in Australia has suffered slightly as a spectacle over the years, because so many top players have gravitated towards the New South Wales Breakers, who have won the WNCL 10 seasons in a row and 16 times overall.

Although WNCL is set to continue as a 50-over competition, the key focus will now be on the T20 WBBL, which will feature a much more level playing field.

Teams will be limited to a maximum of 5 “stars” – i.e. current or recent internationals – of which 3 may be overseas players.

This means up to 24 overseas internationals will get to join the party, with England glove-butler Sarah Taylor, West Indies’ big hitting batsman Deandra Dottin, and South African leg-spinning all-rounder Dane van Niekerk, likely to be at the top of many of those wish-lists.

Plans for a Women’s Big Bash in Australia over the (Antipodean) summer of 2015/16 look to have descended into a bitter three-way pile-on between Cricket Australia, the ACA (the players’ union) and the teams themselves over (what else?) money!

Cricket Australia’s plan that the new league should mirror the 8-team men’s competition always looked ambitious; but it turns out that they were not expecting to have to pay for it – the assumption apparently being that players’ payments would come out of the existing (men’s) salary budgets.

This plan however was pole-axed by the ACA, who called it “robbing Peter to pay Pauline” – adamant that the men’s (much larger) salaries would not be reduced one iota to pay the women’s (considerably smaller) retainers.

The teams then in effect replied “don’t look at us” – despite an earlier insistence that they should call the tunes by selecting and contracting players themselves, the idea of actually paying the piper was apparently not quite what they had in mind!

So it has been left to Cricket Australia to pick up the budget to the tune of some half a million Australian dollars, part of which will come from reducing payments to the Southern Stars. Cricket Australia argue that the players will end up with the same amount of money at the end of the day; but a less charitable interpretation might be that they are now robbing Pauline to pay Pauline.

Meanwhile, the ACA is now also haggling after a “Memorandum of Understanding” over women players’ salaries – effectively a long-term collective-bargaining agreement, which is arguably in principle a good thing; but has further damaged relations with Cricket Australia, who argue that huge steps have already been made. With retainers going from $15,000 just a couple of years ago to over $50,000 now, Cricket Australia believe that anything more is unrealistic in the short term.

It is all an uncomfortable reminder that even in those countries such as England and Australia, where women’s cricket exists on a relatively stable financial footing compared to places like New Zealand and India, we remain indentured to The Other Game and when something has to give… well… I think we are all acutely aware of where it might (and might not) give first!

CRICKETher travelled all the way to Edmonton today to see Middlesex against Berkshire, only to see the match abandoned without a ball being bowled.

Was it raining? Nope. It may have rained last night, and a little this morning, but all afternoon there has been bright sunshine across London.

Yet no play for Middlesex Women.

Why? Because Edmonton Cricket Club do not currently possess fully-functioning covers. The last set were vandalised months ago, and the new ones have not yet arrived.

Which meant that, overnight, the pitch was covered with leaking, ragged old tarpaulins – and so much water got through the holes that, even at 11 o’clock this morning, it was obvious that the teams would be unable to play at all today.

This was incredibly frustrating – for the fans, who had travelled miles to be at the game, and even more so for the players, who were clearly chomping at the bit to get out there and start their season.

I guess you could argue that today was no one’s fault except for the idiots who vandalised the covers in the first place.

Maybe. Except…would the staff at any men’s county ground in the country have to go through months of insurance paperwork and bureaucracy before their covers were replaced? Would any men’s county season ever start without all grounds having fully-functioning covers?

Would the ECB even let that happen?

The problem is, this isn’t an isolated incident. It happens every year, and the ECB never seem to do anything about it.

Just last year, Sussex’s match against Berkshire at Wokingham was cancelled because the bowlers’ approaches hadn’t been covered at all the night before. It rained overnight, but we had a full day of bright sunshine – yet no cricket for either team.

I could go on.

The ECB claim they are making women’s domestic cricket a priority. The change this season to a white ball and coloured clothing is supposed to be an example of that.

Hardly. When CRICKETher turned up at Edmonton today, the black covers for the sightscreens – put up in preparation for the white-ball game today – didn’t even fully cover the screens. I guess they couldn’t afford bigger ones? Hardly a shining example of commitment to domestic cricket by the ECB.

The way I see it is this.

Either:

1. The ECB don’t know that this is going on and it’s actually the fault of the cricket boards, who are failing to provide adequate funding / pitches for their women’s county teams.

Or:

2. The ECB do know that this is going on, but they aren’t bothered enough about women’s county cricket to do anything about it.

If it’s 1), then we need to work together to bring any incidents like this one to the attention to the ECB. Please do report them to CRICKETher, and we will do so.

If it’s 2)…well, I guess I’m just hoping that it isn’t 2). Because if the ECB want women’s cricket to thrive, it’s not enough just to focus on those 18 contracted players at the elite level. We need women’s county cricket – which is, after all, the next level below international cricket (at least until those elusive franchise do or don’t appear) to be played on good quality pitches. We need fans to feel like everyone is working together to provide a good spectacle for them. And above all else…we actually need some cricket to be played.

Today was not a good day for women’s cricket. I can’t think that the ECB would disagree with that, at least.

The Women’s County Championship starts tomorrow, but it looks like missing from action will be several leading stars, including big stars like Yorkshire’s Katherine Brunt, Berkshire’s Heather Knight, Nottinghamshire’s Danni Wyatt and Sussex’s Georgia Elwiss – all of whom are flying back from an England training camp (NB a training camp… not international matches!) in Sri Lanka, too late to play.

Meanwhile, later in the summer, England players will miss several county matches during the Women’s Ashes.

You have to ask if the England administrators even looked at the county calendar when they were making these decisions?

Although this is par for the course in The Other Game, where England players rarely play for their counties, domestic women’s cricket simply does itself a disservice if it goes down the same route.

From a marketing perspective, we only have a limited number of Big Guns, and if you take out three of the most well-known names (Katherine “Waitrose” Brunt, Danni “Marry Me On Twitter” Wyatt and Heather “Batwoman” Knight) fans are going to leave disappointed… or worse still not turn up at all, if they don’t see the faces they recognise on the posters.

The press also need drama and stories to build interest; and if the leading players aren’t involved, they just won’t bother.

And finally, from a cricketing point of view, without the best players participating in what (for the moment) will always be quite a short season, individual match-ups won’t be enticing or competitive; and this also damages England, who need fertile domestic ground to grow the next generation of international talent.

So if we are indeed moving to a franchise model next summer, the franchises need ALL their players ALL the time, and the calendar needs to be scheduled accordingly.

A Tweet from the Breezair SA Sorpions reminds us that although we will have a T20 Women’s Big Bash next season in Australia, contested between city-based-franchises, One Day cricket will still it seems be contested by the old state teams.

This is, in a word, crazy!

We already have a situation in The Other Game, where the top players play for umpteen different sides over the course of a season; but just because it happens in men’s cricket, that doesn’t make it necessarily a good idea. It is confusing and alienating for fans, especially the casual ones our game really needs to reach out to, when their favourite stars are playing together in the same uniforms one day, and against each other in opposing colours the next.

Word is that the ECB’s plan for franchises in England will cover both One Day and T20 cricket; and if so, this is definitely the right decision – it is clearer for the fans, easier for the media (who, lest we forget, are also coming new to the concept of women’s domestic cricket), and also preferable for the players, who tend to perform better as a team when they really know their team-mates.

But what do you think? Have your say below!

As the summer months head into view, the BBC’s cricket correspondents are once-again oiling-up the wheels of their outside broadcast vans, ready to cover “every ball” of the county season.

Or rather… every ball of the men’s county season!

Because there is another county cricket season on the horizon – the Women’s County Championship, sponsored by our friends at Royal London – takes place every summer, to large-scale indifference from the media, even those who cover the darker reaches of The Other Game*. (* Men’s Cricket!)

But women’s county cricket matters – the England team don’t just emerge from hibernation in Loughborough each August, play a handful of ODIs and T20s (and the odd Test) before disappearing again.

County cricket is the foundation without which the international game wouldn’t exist. It is where form is found; where skills are nurtured; and where reputations are forged.

CRICKETher can’t promise to cover “every ball” of the women’s county season; but we’ll be bringing you all we can. Together with our friends and colleagues at womens-cricket.blogspot.co.uk and womenscricket.net we aim to get you the inside scoop on what’s happening in women’s domestic cricket – who is making runs; who is taking wickets; who is in form, and who isn’t – we won’t be pulling punches here!

And hopefully together, we’ll make the “forgotten game” a bit less forgotten!

The ICC Women’s Championship really is a bit of a “game-changer” for international women’s cricket.

Not only does it act as a ‘Future Tours Program’ for women’s cricket, ensuring that everybody plays everybody else over a two-and-a-bit year cycle; but it also adds an extra competitive edge by acting as a qualifying tournament for the 2017 World Cup in England.

Just four of the eight teams involved in the Women’s Championship will qualify directly for the World Cup; though there are two caveats here:

1. The “bottom” sides get a BIG second-chance, via a qualifying tournament with the “minor” nations; and given the disparities between the “major” and “minor” nations, you’ve got to think that in all likelihood they would still qualify anyway.
2. You also have to wonder what would really happen in practice if England (as hosts) or India actually failed to qualify? Surely TV/ sponsor pressure would be overwhelming to include them regardless?

Nevertheless, direct qualification is still a major incentive; and it is clear we are seeing the impact of this in the news coming out of New Zealand.

First, the board have (for the time-being) sorted-out their stand-off with the players over contracts. You may recall that in April 2013, four leading players were offered coaching jobs; but a year later, captain Suzie Bates quit, saying that the demands of the role were too onerous, leaving no room for training or recuperation.

The situation has been resolved by granting 10 players an annual stipend in addition to their match fees and expenses. It isn’t a huge amount of money; but it is an improvement on the previous situation; and leaves the 10 leading players in a much healthier situation.

Second, New Zealand cricket have reacted to the challenge of the Women’s Championship by appointing two big names – Jacob Oram and Matthew Bell – to the women’s coaching staff for the period leading up to their crucial tour to the West Indies this September. With those automatic qualification spots up for grabs, this series matters to New Zealand like never before, and West Indies are one of their key competitors in the fight.

Oram and Bell bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the New Zealand women’s setup – and they are going to need it, because the competition is getting fierce as England, Australia, India, West Indies, New Zealand and South Africa all scrap it out; with Pakistan and Sri Lanka also in the mix with the potential to cause an upset at any time.

It’s going to be an exciting couple of years for international women’s cricket; and CRICKETher is looking forward to following it with you.