The Hundred did wonders with the female game
The England & The Welsh Cricket Board hoped the women's 100 could sell out New Road. Instead, he immediately sold out the Oval.
When the 100 was conceived, it was not in the plans for the women's competition to share venues with the men's game after game. Instead, with the exception of the occasional double header, the women's tournament will be moved to smaller first-class venues that do not host the men's 100: the first game of the first season was scheduled at New Road, with the final day at Hove. p>
But the pandemic forced the 100 to double headlines. By chance, just like the design, they changed women's cricket. In 2022, 271,000 fans watched the women's 100, defined as being on the ground by the middle of the second inning of a game. In the first seven completed games of 2023, 69,000 spectators were present at this point in the women's matches, averaging almost 10,000 per match.
Despite all the attention to established international stars, which has been slightly undermined this year by the departure of a number of leading Australians, the tournament's greatest virtue is to provide an outlet for lesser-known players. Alice Capsey and Lauren Bell used the first season as a catalyst to launch their international careers. At Trent Bridge in the first game of this year's tournament, 18-year-old fast bowler Mary Taylor took 3-for-18 in her 100 debut. Phi Morris, a 29-year-old who has never played for England, scored a five-out-of-seven — the best in both men's and women's 100 tournaments — for the Manchester Originals on Monday.
An idea expressed by many critics of the Hundreds and discussed in the counties that men's competitions should be drastically changed or even abolished, while women's tournaments should remain intact, is inherently contradictory. After all, it was the merger of the two tournaments that became the basis for the success of the Women's 100.
Fans have appeared at both men's and women's matches. Photo: Getty Images/Alex Davidson
Never before in the history of cricket — and never in the history of mainstream British sport — have men's and women's home competitions been launched at the same time, with the same teams and the same match lists. All this created the feeling that the fans are watching not so much men's or women's sports, but two teams that are an equal part of one club. Boys and girls in Oval Invincibles or Trent Rockets uniforms go to duels and cheer for both men's and women's teams with equal pleasure. The double headlines have also spurred interest in watching women's matches, even though women's games are always played earlier than men's, which is an obstacle.
The success of the Women's Hundreds is in line with the trend in the sport. Perhaps the best example of this is the Grand Slam tennis tournaments, where the men's and women's competitions are equally integral parts of the same event.
In football, the transition of major clubs to the women's game was seen as a vital step in the development of the sport. Manchester United's belated creation of a women's team in 2018 was seen as a landmark moment, a way to encourage fans to follow the women's game, which could benefit from the same rivalry as the men's. The easiest way to turn the fans of the men's team into fans of the women's team is to create a women's team in their club. What is unique is that in The 100, the male and female sides were created at the same time.
The 100 had equality, with teams created at the same time , and double headers to make it easy to transition into a female game. Photo: Getty Images/Alex Davidson
Maintaining this happy coexistence is key to the further development of the women's game. To change the men's tournament is, by definition, to change the environment in which the women's tournament also thrived: Tammy Beaumont of England emphasized this last month.
«What makes the 100 so good is the men and women on one stage and no other country has anything like it,” Beaumont said. «It was a game changer when men and women were on the same stage on the same day.»
Women's cricket has a history of lack of investment and administrative neglect: Lord didn't allow women's play until 1976 — a then there was no second match until 1987 — and no professional contracts were introduced until 2014. Now the ECB — with a little hesitation — has found a way to revolutionize interest in the women's home game. If these gains are undone for the benefit of the male game, the impression left is that women's cricket is still of less importance to administrators.
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