If women’s cricket wants more test cricket, it will have to develop a supporting base.
At present there is no other multi-day cricket on offer. If it were introduced, then the professional arm would have to be massively extended. Where is the money coming from to cover it? It’s one of the many dilemmas facing cricket.
One extreme response is the introduction of the Hundred, an innovation that reeks of fear and alienation.
Fear, since the thinking is: the only way to attract a larger audience to the game is to shorten it to the briefest span yet known – apart from games of French cricket in the garden that could easily lead to family spats and an early bath.
Alienation, since the basis of the game is a balance between bat and ball. Cricket has known imbalances of an extreme kind. In the 1920s Australian state sides twice topped 1000 runs in a single innings. A recent club game saw an innings of 2, with the batsmen compiling a grand total of 0 runs.
The whole trend of cricket over the past 60 years has been to favour the bat. T20 has exaggerated it; the Hundred will extend it further.
The bowler’s task is made harder by the introduction of the white ball, needed to permit play under lights – lights needed to allow people to attend games after work. But the white ball makes life infinitely harder for the bowler.
As for the red ball, is there any compelling reason why it should not be used in daytime 50-over games?
A New Approach
Now Alex Hartley of Lancashire and Thunder has contacted Danni Wyatt of Durham and Northern Diamonds (https://cricket.lancashirecricket.co.uk/news/2021-news/hartley-looking-to-start-t20-campaign-with-victory-over-thunders-local-rivals) and (https://www.northerndiamonds.co.uk/post/roses-rivals-agree-on-showcase-red-ball-fixture) about the possibility of a red-ball cross-Pennine game. Wyatt reacted favourably.
Both see the sense in developing such games as a first step towards building the experience necessary for more test cricket.
Two questions arise: could such games be developed into a full-scale competition based on the eight regional hubs? The answer must be yes, so long as a gap can be made in the summer schedule; second, how could they be extended into a multi-day format? A starting-point might be a 2-day fixture of two innings each. Use is already made of bank-holiday weekends for T20 games on a triangular pattern.
The introduction of the eight hubs last year has given women’s cricket an enormous boost. The 41 domestic contracts were likewise highly beneficial, but it leaves a large number of players existing on the old amateur pattern, having to make sacrifices to be part of the game at a high level. Standards are rising visibly, but they will need yet more funding to allow promising players to prove their worth.
Banging the Drum
The Hundred has been subjected to promotional backing of the loudest sort. Any return to longer-format cricket would need a trumpet fanfare equally forceful and persistent.
