Women’s cricket all over the world has gone through a recent upsurge during the Women’s World Cup in England in June earlier this year. The teams were seen playing a very good brand of cricket and millions are believed to have watched the tournament with International Cricket Council (ICC) decision to telecast and live stream all the matches playing a crucial factor. Eventually, England won the tournament beating India in nail-biter by nine runs courtesy some amazing bowling performances from Anya Shrubsole picking up six wickets to lift the prestigious trophy.
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The International Cricket Council’s CEO Dave Richardson in a video was seen elated while announcing the outcomes of a research on women’s cricket which was undertaken recently. While talking extensively about the research he said that the main aim was to cover three main areas such as the awareness levels pertaining to the Women’s World Cup, what was the perception of the respondents about the brand of cricket, and lastly what can be done to motivate people to engage themselves in women’s cricket. Out of the entire positive outcome from all the five geographical areas where the interview was done, Dave drew everybody’s attention that more than 50% of the respondents’ children were inspired by the women cricketers. He also explained how the World Championship works as a catalyst for the good quality of cricket the women teams are presenting. He also said playing more international matches has helped teams like India, South Africa and New Zealand are competing on winning the trophy. With the second edition of the World Championship it will be almost 8 or 9 teams competing against each other to win the championship unlike five or ten years back when only Australia and England dominated the scene.
ICC has planned a Women’s Cricket Championship as a preparing event which will lead to the next world cup will be played on the same format as it was done in 2014-16 season where the first eight teams such as Australia, England, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and West Indies are scheduled to play three ODI’s against each other on a home and away basis.
The World Championship will kick off when Sri Lanka took on West Indies in the first match of the three match series in Trinidad on October 11. The Caribbean captain Stafanie Taylor credited the World Championship for the development in Women’s game for the past few years. She further added, “The journey to reach the next ICC Women’s World Cup starts here, so we will be taking it one match at a time. At the same time, we also have to continue to expose players and fortify our side, so it will be an interesting challenge. We have won six of our last eight matches against the Sri Lankans, including at this year’s ICC WWC, so we are working to ensure that this trend continues.”
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The host of the 2021 World Cup New Zealand, along with the top three teams from the championship will get direct entry to the ICC’s coveted tournament for the women’s game. The remaining four teams will then have to go through an ICC Women’s Qualifier Event where another six team from Africa, Asia, East Pacific Asia and Europe will join them to grab a ticket for the final event. Each team will get two points for each win, one point for a tie or no-result and no points for a loss. The teams will be inspired to play T20Is during the tours but no addition in the ODI series can be made.
The women in blues skipper Mithali Raj at the launching event of the Women’s World Championship 2017 said, “Social media from ICC has given a huge platform to celebrate women’s cricket. People are more curious to know about the life of women cricketers, how the journey of women’s cricket and cricketers has been.” She also talked about how the young girls are drawing inspiration from the women cricketers of these days and taking up cricket as a serious sport.