Raf Nicholson

The eight-year gap between England and India women

Since 2006, England women have risen to unbelievable heights on and off the field, while India have sunk into oblivion

11-Aug-2014

I'm not sure how the England squad for the last England-India women's Test match was announced, but I'll bet it was pretty different from this time around.

For one thing, the announcement last Monday was made at the top of London's famous Shard building, 72 floors up, with the most unbelievable views of the city stretching out below us. The Shard was not even under construction the last time an England-India women's Test match took place. For another thing, this was the first occasion of its kind: a formal launch event to mark the start of the women's international summer, with the media out in force. It was the kind of launch even Alastair Cook and Peter Moores would envy.

The fact is that English women's cricket looks, and feels, very different to how it did even 12 months ago. Professional contracts. A shiny new fleet of Kia Sportages. Glitzy events to woo the media. And a squad of players who make up the best-paid women's sports team in the UK, and one of the best in the world. That launch at the top of the Shard was a pretty good metaphor for the dizzying heights that English women's cricket has achieved lately.

Full post

Why women must play more at Lord's

The MCC staged a women's match as part of their 200th anniversary celebrations but Lord's still often feels like it's a ground only for men

Raf Nicholson

18-Jun-2014

Some places are special without them even trying. To me, Lord's is one. Walking through the Grace Gates and catching my first glimpse of the red-brick pavilion always fills me with joy. I think I'm a bit in awe of the whole place, actually.

Lord's is also an enclave of history; it's hard not to sense that when I'm within its perimeters. But even so, when I went there last month to watch MCC Women play the Rest of the World Women, history seemed particularly alive - everywhere I turned.

It was alive as I walked round the ground before play, past the pavilion, and I was reminded very loudly by the imp that always sits on my shoulder whenever I see those bacon-and-egg ties of how recently I would have been excluded from that club, from that space, purely because of my gender. The year 1999 (when women first became MCC members) is really not that long ago.

Full post

Do female cricketers care about how they look on the field?

Functionality, femininity, comfort, appearance - what matters to them when it comes to uniforms?

Raf Nicholson

18-May-2014

Those of you currently glued to the IPL may not be aware that there are plans afoot for a women's version, to be run on similar lines: the Women's International Cricket League. Many of the details surrounding the WICL are still unconfirmed, but what caught my attention a couple of weeks ago was a press release announcing Indian designer Masaba Gupta as the WICL's official "design partner". Gupta, according to this latest information, will be designing a playing and training kit for the players involved in the WICL (rumoured to include Ellyse Perry, Meg Lanning and Alex Blackwell). Getting one of India's most exciting young designers involved, suggests the press release, is just one further part of the WICL's mission to "bring about meaningful change to the traditional limiting perceptions that exist about women's cricket".

It all sounds desperately familiar.

Back in 1934, when the Women's Cricket Association (WCA) was trying to decide on an official England uniform for their first tour of Australia and New Zealand, a special committee was chosen to select a suitable playing outfit. Eventually, after much thought, they settled on white blouses, white divided skirts (or culottes, as you might know them), and white knee-length socks. It was specified that the skirts should be no shorter than four inches from the ground when kneeling.

Full post

The unseen cricket of our modern times

The Women's World T20 was scheduled to run alongside the men's seemingly to make it more visible. But it wasn't

Raf Nicholson

13-Apr-2014

Once upon a time, the greatest events in cricket history went unseen, and unheard, except by the lucky few who were present at the ground when they took place. Then the cricket broadcasting revolution happened, and everything changed. The first televised cricket was screened by the BBC in 1938, from Lord's and The Oval - and suddenly, the best bits of Len Hutton's 364 against Australia were on record forever. Since 1957, the BBC has had ball-by-ball commentary for every (men's) Test played in England; England's 1989-90 tour of the West Indies became the first overseas tour broadcast live in the UK.

Nowadays, we live in a world where the best moments in cricket are not just numbers on a page, but images imprinted on our memories: Graham Gooch raising his bat on making 300 at Lord's in 1990; the blood draining from Herschelle Gibbs' face as he dropped the World Cup; the excruciating end to the 2005 Edgbaston Test, where whole nations were glued to their screens until the final ball. It's become a world where, as Lawrence Booth put it in Wisden in 2011, "armchair viewers expect their cricket on a plate, with side helpings of Hawk-Eye, Hot-Spot and High Definition". We watch cricket, and we live it, as it unfolds before our eyes.

The days where the most significant moments in world cricket were things we read about after the event, with only our imaginations to supply the visuals, are over. All that was just once upon a time.

Full post

A new era for England's women cricketers

Plans for the first-ever fully professional contracts for England women mark the end of a decades-long struggle

Raf Nicholson

12-Mar-2014

"End of an era" is a phrase bandied around a lot in cricket: generally whenever a great player (often these days it seems to be a bloke with the name Graeme) retires. The historian in me is always sceptical about such claims. Sometimes, though, the term is apt; and though it may have slipped under the radar, as so much in women's cricket seems to do, I think it's pretty clear that we have just witnessed the end of an era for English women's cricket.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the ECB announced that it will be introducing the first fully professional contracts for England women. Though full details have not yet been revealed, the ECB's directors have agreed that a proportion of their future revenues will be used to provide the women's team with "a major pay rise" as well as a bonus to reward their recent Ashes win in Australia. Giles Clarke described the pay rises as "significant... we are proudly creating the first group of full-time women's professional cricketers."

It's not that no one saw this coming, seeing Cricket Australia introduce what amounted to pro contracts for some of their women cricketers last year; or that it wasn't the next logical step in a process of professionalisation that has been ongoing since the ECB took over women's cricket in 1998. And yet this was still by no means inevitable. In 1976 England captain Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, dealing with speculation about the future of women's cricket, wrote: "Women will always play for the love of the game and there will be no professional female cricketers." I have read countless variations on the theme since, most reaching the same conclusion.

Full post

Double headers are the future, but they stink

Playing women's matches before men's is good in principle, but they end up reducing the women's game to a sideshow

Raf Nicholson

10-Feb-2014

Since the pioneering World Twenty20 in 2009, when the men's and women's tournaments took place in conjunction for the first time, T20 double headers have been hailed as one of the best things to have ever happened to women's cricket, and for good reason.

Scheduling a women's match directly prior to a men's match has undoubtedly meant larger audiences for women's cricket, and attracted new fans to the sport. And the exposure the women's game has received - with the prospect of televising two matches back to back a far more financially attractive one for the TV companies - has also increased as a result.

The benefits are obvious. But here is the thing: if you have ever doubted the continuing overwhelming disparity between men's and women's cricket, go and cover a double header. I reckon it'd be a pretty eye-opening experience. It was for me.

Full post

What have the men got to do with it?

Female cricketers are often asked to place their performances in context with those of their male counterparts. Is that even fair?

Raf Nicholson

07-Jan-2014

Back in the heady days when England looked capable of winning a Test match (oh, how long ago that feels), I wrote a piece exhorting Australian supporters fed up with the Ashes situation to: "Go and see your women's team play… and watch some actual competitive cricket."

I think it's fair to say that the shoe is now firmly on the other foot. As one of my most irritating friends is at pains to remind me: "It's the chicks that now have to restore English pride." Maybe the Barmy Army should get themselves along to Perth on January 10.

It's a big weight to carry, though, and it didn't exactly work out too well for the Southern Stars over the summer in England. They were overwhelmed, lost the series 12-4 on points, and England, for a short, sweet interlude, held both the men's and the women's Ashes. Not anymore.

Full post

What if Sachin had been a girl?

Young and highly talented female cricketers are forced to quit the game before they reach the height of their powers. Is that at all fair?

Raf Nicholson

08-Dec-2013

It's November 15, 2013. It is the day of Sachin Tendulkar's last Test innings. The coverage is overwhelming. Sachin makes 74, and the crowd is overjoyed; some of them are crying. They'll remember this day forever. We'll remember it too. Tributes are flooding in. The event cannot go unnoticed.

In amongst it all comes a straight-to-the-point press release from the ECB: Holly Colvin, England's left-arm spinner and one of the team's biggest assets, will be unavailable for the women's Ashes in Australia and the World Twenty20 in Bangladesh. She is taking a break from the game, to pursue a career outside cricket.

She is 24 years old.

Full post

Ignorance is the worst crime in commentary

And you get plenty of it in women's cricket these days. Why must we listen to those who have little knowledge of the players and care less?

Raf Nicholson

06-Nov-2013

Cricket commentators get a lot of stick. In a recent post, a Cordon blogger described them as "cliche-spewing automatons" and argued that no-commentary broadcasts should be an option for all television viewers. It seems to me that some of these critiques are quite extreme, especially as they often come down to disliking the style of a particular commentator.

I am trying instead to imagine the uproar there would have been if, say, during Aaron Finch's record score of 156 off 63 balls in that England-Australia T20 over the summer, those in the commentary box had spent the entire innings discussing a completely different sport, or if, when an ex-international player had joined the regulars in the commentary box to provide additional insight, as occasionally happens, Nick Knight's first question had been: "So what are you interested in other than cricket?" I think pretty much any cricket fan would agree that this kind of apathy towards the spectacle taking place would have been pretty unacceptable.

Apparently, though, it is acceptable for it to happen in women's cricket, as those of us who tuned in to the final of the recent women's tri-series in the Caribbean between England and West Indies discovered. As the commentary unfolded, a little pocket of Twitter (it was the early hours of the morning in the UK, after all, and the live stream provided by the WICB hadn't exactly been well-publicised) fumed incredulously, and helplessly, at what we were hearing.

Full post

A question of confidence

If we want more females to participate in cricket we must rid ourselves of the perception that it's a man's game

Raf Nicholson

12-Oct-2013

Recently, I picked up a bat for the first time in four years, and strode (well, wandered nervously) out to the wicket to bat for Shepperton Ladies, who were playing the Authors CC in a friendly game at Chiswick. I had turned up to watch, and was drafted in at the last minute because Shepperton were short of players. The tension of that walk - knowing you are about to reveal to a whole group of people precisely how terrible you are at the game you claim to be competent at writing about - is difficult to describe in words. But if I was to attempt it, "confidence" would not be one of the words on the list.

I made a nine-ball duck.

Graham Gooch once said: "When confidence is undermined, a player's whole game can be shot to pieces". From time to time, confidence eludes even the best cricketers. For some, the problem is more fundamental than that. For some of us, the problem is having the confidence to pick up the bat in the first place.

Full post

1 2 3 4

Showing 21 - 30 of 37