One of the delights of sport, and one with such longevity and steeped in such history and tradition as Test cricket, is in watching the peaks and troughs of various teams throughout the years, decades, centuries even.
The dominant West Indian side of the 1980s and early 90s, who soon fell away to the Australian superstars of the early noughties, who in turn succumbed to a resurgent South Africa, bouncing back after years in apartheid wilderness.
“I am here because I worked harder than anyone else.”
Perhaps it’s because I never quite reached the top. Perhaps I’m just cynical. Perhaps I’m wrong. Whatever the reason, this expression, of unequivocally attributing one’s success to unparalleled hard work, has always been a bête noire.
The Australian surfer’s achievement this year remains a case of despite, not because, of the support female athletes receive, but her success may herald a wave of change
This World Cup has been a coming of age tournament for T20 cricket, and no one is to thank more for this than the ‘dot-ball annihilators’ of the game.
The World Twenty20 is underway and, as befitting this form of cricket, it started with a bang.
The West Indies’ Chris Gayle, he of golden bats, misjudged pitch-side comments and a backlift to strike fear in the heart of any bowler, was the man to deliver, bludgeoning an unbeaten century against an excitable England side.
“The Test is to be broadcast on Sky – a first for the women’s game – and both are aware of their roles as ambassadors for women’s sport,” gushed one national newspaper of the women’s Ashes Test last year, triumphantly.
England were once the gold standard in women’s cricket. No more
“Where were we exactly 10 yrs ago today?” tweeted Clare Connor to her old team-mates the day before the second T20 of the women’s Ashes last year. The former England captain, now head of women’s cricket at the ECB, was alluding to the day England women, after 42 barren years, regained the Ashes in 2005.
The Nightwatchman – The Wisden Cricket Quarterly
The Nightwatchman is a quarterly collection of essays and long-form articles and is available in print and e-book formats.
“A stepping stone or a graveyard?” I was asked of women’s county cricket not so long ago. In the past I would instantly retort that it was just one rung below the international fold, the gap not so big as many imagined. Increasingly scepticism has seeped in. The introduction of the Super League this summer might – perhaps – just bridge the growing divide.
“Politics is a blood sport.” So said the politician Aneurin Bevan, whose stubborn persistence and booming Welsh oratory helped him spearhead one of the British government’s most revered accomplishments, the establishment of the publicly funded National Health Service.
IT’S easy to come away from the inaugural Women’s Big Bash League singing its unequivocal praises.
It’s easy to think that its stellar launch will continue seamlessly into next year, and beyond.
It’s easy too to assume that its success was written in the stars, right from the outset. It won’t necessarily, and it wasn’t. But what a first season it was.
Isabelle Westbury 