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Opportunities abound for women's cricket as T20 World Cup arrives

<span>Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images

Strategically, Cricket Australia has been building up to this home season for five years. The impressive growth of women’s cricket in Australia over that time has not been the result of hitting and hoping. It was calculated, and so far the sums have proved accurate. But in substantial part it has been achieved domestically, not by the input the national women’s team.

Such teams have their moments of ignition. England enjoyed theirs in 2017, when their winning 50-over World Cup campaign saw pool matches packing out smaller grounds, then the triumph of 27,000 people selling out the final at Lord’s. India in the same tournament went from barely noticed to national sensations in their own country, a surge that peaked when current captain Harmanpreet Kaur downed Australia in the semi-final with her outrageous unbeaten 171.

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Australia’s national women’s players are highly regarded at home, with a long winning history and none of the controversy of their male counterparts. But there is still the chance of one big boost taking their game much further into mainstream national thought. The summer of 2020 will see the first ICC tournament branded as a Twenty20 World Cup, giving the shortest format a similar cachet to the one-day international game. It’s also the first major women’s tournament to be held in Australia since the game’s revolution began.

The big leap was in 2015, when the Big Bash League was duplicated to create a women’s version. A lot of things were ropey: coverage was sporadic, the schedule could best be described as experimental, and the spread of talent across an unprecedented eight teams created a sharp dip in quality about halfway through each XI. But where the AFL women’s competition has had to push against instances of administrative ambivalence and public hostility, the cricket equivalent got far more consistent support.

Investing heavily without being distracted by teething problems was CA’s approach, and it worked. Within the first season, the television numbers were way over predictions and more games were put on air. By the third, players had new professional contracts and the on-field standard skyrocketed. By the fourth, grounds were selling out for the final, and half the national squad was made up of new players who had emerged through the WBBL.

This enthusiasm and support relied little on the marketing clout of the green and gold. In fact opportunities were scarce for the national team to be seen when the stakes were high. In home seasons, their television presence was limited to some scattered bilateral matches sprinkled into gaps in the men’s program. There was one Ashes series in 2017, when CA’s website had to stream Ellyse Perry’s double-century because no station would screen a women’s Test. The major ICC tournaments were in India in 2013, Bangladesh in 2014, India in 2016, England in 2017, and the West Indies in 2018. Consigned to strange hours and obscure channels, not many people engaged with the results. Prestige will only take you so far when the tournament itself appears in the mind as a half-remembered dream, glimpsed on a phone update on a 4am bathroom sojourn.

Teams such as Pakistan and Bangladesh are reliant on star turns from standout players
Teams such as Pakistan and Bangladesh are reliant on star turns from standout players. Photograph: Jono Searle/Getty Images

This is where the T20 World Cup comes in, with various stars aligning in a most promising way. Simplified and rebranded, easily digestible, packaged into a trim two-and-a-half weeks with action almost every day. Some feelgood stories of battling teams, some grudge matches with old rivals, some foreign stars in most sides who have impressed locally during WBBL visits.

Most importantly this World Cup falls into a helpful gap in the program, after a men’s cricket summer that could comfortably be described as failing to whelm. Those who were left with a hunger for something meaningful in their favourite bat-and-ball sport could find it here. The AFLW competition has started up already, but the two women’s codes could be seen as acting in solidarity rather than rivalry. The meaningless pre-season faff of the AFL men’s competition has not yet reached the full roar of its white noise. It’s still summer, just. Time for cricket.

So this is the opportunity: to give the women’s side of the ledger a huge boost in one of the game’s most important economies. To lay an easily locatable marker that signals the future viability and vitality of the sport. To draw the men’s and women’s national teams closer in how they are regarded and covered.

Related: England in the running to upset Australia in Women’s T20 World Cup

At the same time, it will underline a disparity that only increases. England and India have had their turbocharges, Australia may have its own. But these are the three teams that are strongest, the three nations offering most support, the three boards with Smaug’s share of cricket’s global gold. They can afford good women’s programs, where players can genuinely reach their best.

Coming up against them will be teams poorly placed to compete. New Zealand and South Africa have some fine players but operate on the bus-fare budgets of the others. West Indies were among the best but dropped into a sinkhole. Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh perennially struggle, as much against antipathy from home to their existence as against their opponents.

They can win once in a while, as Sri Lanka showed by thrashing England in a warm-up this week, but only when a standout player like Chamari Atapattu has a star turn. Day to day, week to week, they can’t keep up. If the plan leading up to this tournament does work, and women’s cricket in Australia gets its boost, a good part of the rewards need to be diverted elsewhere.