In December, in response to the success of the Lionesses in the Women’s Euros, the UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee set up an inquiry into women’s sport and invited the submission of written evidence.

The terms of reference for the inquiry are:

1. How can the growth in domestic women’s football be accelerated?
2. What should other sports be learning from the growth of women’s football leagues in the UK?
3. What is needed for women’s sporting organisations to grow audiences and revenues?
4. What action is needed to tackle sexism and misogyny in sport?
5. What needs to change at a regulatory level to facilitate more parity between men’s and women’s sport?

In my evidence, I focused on Question 5. Those of you who follow The CRICKETher Weekly will be aware that I have quite strong views about how cricket (and other women’s sports) should be governed!

My current research project at Bournemouth University looks at the way in which women’s sporting organisations were forced into “mergers” with men’s sporting organisations in the 1990s – including the Women’s Cricket Association, which (having run women’s cricket since 1926) was absorbed by the newly-formed ECB in 1998.

My research shows that these mergers were not desired by those within women’s sport – they were, largely, government-mandated. The merger “negotiations” were dominated by male voices and priorities, and subsequently (in my view) the mergers stymied the growth and development of women’s sport.

In my evidence, I argue that merged governance (where women’s and men’s sport are run by the same governing bodies) is not always the best way to promote parity between men’s and women’s sport. I also recommend that the Government give serious consideration to the adoption of a model of devolved / separate governance of women’s sport.

That might sound extreme – but it’s important to think hard about why women’s sport hasn’t yet achieved parity with men’s sport. Maybe it’s time to get radical?

A number of National Governing Bodies also submitted evidence to the inquiry, including England Netball, the FA and the RFU. (The ECB didn’t, though – aside from a short joint submission with the FA, LTA, RFU and RFL calling for the Government to improve sport for girls in schools.)

You can read my evidence, as well as all other submissions, here – it’s worth a look!

So, what happens next? Usually, the Committee moves now to oral evidence sessions, so it’s possible I may get a summons to appear before the Committee and present my suggestions there.

After that, an overall report will be compiled with recommendations for the Government, based on all the evidence presented. I’ll keep you updated once that final report is published. The Government don’t have to act on it, of course, but it could make for very interesting reading!

It’s always tough to make an impact as a bowler in short-form cricket – you only get 24 balls at most, when the top batters get far more than that. (Imagine if batters had to retire after facing 24 balls?) Furthermore, although there has been a downwards trend in 1st innings totals, WPL has not been a bowlers’ tournament.

But this means that (as someone once said) every ball counts all the more; and the cream rises to the top with the likes of Sophie Ecclestone and Marizanne Kapp showing why they are always amongst the top picks for these franchise tournaments.

A breakthrough player can sometimes still spring a surprise though, and the big one at WPL has been Saika Ishaque (international caps: zero) who tops the ball-by-ball rankings having bowled with metronomic consistency – bagging dot after dot (a dot less than every other ball) while conceding a wide only every 134 balls. Oh… and she took some wickets too – 13 of them, which is unlucky for some – batters, mainly!

These rankings offer a little bit of a shift in perspective to those you’ll see elsewhere, because they completely ignore the total number of runs scored (or wickets taken) and look purely at ball-by-ball performance. They aren’t better or worse than the absolute rankings, but they are different… and we like different!

The epitome of this is Jemimah Rodrigues, who has looked poor value in terms of her absolute numbers. She was one of the most expensive players in the competition, costing Delhi Capitals 2.2 Cr – twice as much as Meg Lanning – but while Meg Lanning was the top run-scorer in the group stages with 310 runs, Jemimah was well down the pack, at 22nd with 117 runs.

And it is true that Jemimah has not been in the best of form – she’ll be disappointed with 117 runs and a highest score of 34*.

But what the metrics show is that even when she is out of form, she maintains her ball-by-ball numbers like (almost) no one else. She might not be finding the boundary, but she is getting off strike, taking a single every 1.8 balls (by far the lowest number of balls per single in WPL) and running like the clappers to also take a 2 or 3 every 15 balls. And this is what you want in short-form franchise cricket – no one is going to be in form every tournament, so what you need is players who will adapt to their lack of form, and not waste deliveries trying to bat themselves back into form at the team’s expense.

(It is even more important in The Hundred, with its ultra-short format, which is why it is a pity Jemimah priced herself out of the market by setting her reserve price to the top salary band. But to be fair, if I’d just made £220,000 in the WPL,  I probably wouldn’t think £25,000 was worth getting out of bed for either, so no shade on her for that!)

Compare and contrast with Ash Gardner – another of the highest-paid players – who after a brilliant T20 World Cup also struggled for form at WPL, but who seemed to let that get to her and didn’t really deliver in either absolute (10th) or ball-by-ball (15th) numbers.

Unsurprisingly, the highest-ranked English player in the ball-by-ball metrics is Alice Capsey. Capsey is the personification of the ball-by-ball approach to cricket, and as such I suspect we’ll look back on her debut in The Hundred as a watershed moment in the history of the women’s game. She came in, aged 16, and showed that you could go at a strike rate of 100 from ball one, and it changed people’s expectations. She’s yet to make a really big score, but she will… and does it really matter anyway if she’s hitting at 13.5 runs per over when she’s in the middle?