The Other Twenty-20 World Cup

[mr_malk]

I'm not sure what percentage of my cricket-following friends routinely keep up with Women's Cricket, but I've just been keeping track of the [Edit: semi-final final group stage match] of the Women's T20 World Cup, between England Women and Australia Women, and I have to say, Sarah Taylor is just phenomenal. England Women have quite a wealth of

Comments

[undyingking]

I have been following it, as you might expect! Really impressive win yesterday against what looked like a challenging total, especially after losing both openers fairly early.

I was a big fan of Claire Taylor and wondered if the team would slip back a bit after her retirement last year, but they seem to have gone from strength to strength.

I think TMS are covering the remaining stages of the tournament; although this is pretty feeble frankly, considering they had all the people out there anyway and all the games were taking place in one city.

[mr_malk]

Coverage of women's cricket in general is pretty damned poor if you ask me. Occasionally, you get a highlights thing crammed into 5 minutes of ah hour of televised cricket highlights mostly concentrating on a men's match that finished early. If a women's international T20 happens to be taking place at the same venue as a county T20, the local radio crew will sometimes condescend to commentate on it

[undyingking]

I think it's true to say that not all 8 teams at the current tournament were serious contenders. But I think each time it's been held the competition has got slightly wider. You would still pick Eng vs Aus for the final from day 1, but both semis should be tough games, and it wouldn't be a horrifying shock if West Indies or even New Zealand were to sneak through. The Pakistan team has (I think) only recently becoem professional, and they narrowly beat India the other day which must have been a real boost.

It's great that your daughters are interested! -- hope that the highlights on the ECB site are enough to inspire them for the time being…

[mr_malk]

Actually, the fact that India Women went out at the bottom of their (admittedly pretty strong) group was a surprise to me. India would definitely be one of the teams that I would name as contenders, all else being equal. Perhaps over-reliant on one or two stars though.

The ECB highlights vary. The Eng/Aus game doesn't seem to be up there yet, although there is an impressively in-depth post-match press-conference with Charlotte Edwards and Sarah Taylor. This compares to footage of the Eng/Ind women's match which is less than 3 minutes in length, with no commentary of any kind, and frankly looks like the sort of thing a club side might stick on its website if they were short on disk-space. The coverage of the recent ODI and T20s in England was rather better, so it may be related to what footage was made available by the Sri-Lankan cricket authorities. Poor show though. Still. TMS for the finals, which is definitely worth something.