Expanded horizons and closer contests beckon Women’s ODI World Cup

 The ladies performed a cricket World Cup two years earlier than the boys did. That was in England in 1973.

England, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, in addition to an International XI and Young England, took half. The host gained the inaugural version, beating Australia by 92 runs within the last.

But, not many bothered.

The world’s first recorded ladies’s cricket match could have been performed in 1745 in Surrey between two villages of that county, Bramley and Hambledon, however for hundreds of years, the ladies in cricket have been invisible and not getting an excessive amount of consideration.

England’s World Cup heroine of 1973 needed to develop and promote potatoes in order that she may play cricket. The gamers needed to drive to their day jobs after the sport, and one in all them was so exhausted, she fell asleep on the wheel. There have been events when their Indian sisters travelled on bullock carts to play matches.

Today’s feminine cricketer is flying excessive. And she has earned her air-ticket the exhausting means.

And the world’s elite ladies cricketers have flown all the way down to India: for the thirteenth version of the ODI World Cup, which guarantees to be probably the most adopted ladies’s cricket occasion in historical past. It additionally guarantees to be the closest.

Harmanpreet Kaur’s 171 not out for India in opposition to Australia within the semifinal of the 2017 World Cup, the BCCI taking ladies’s cricket beneath its wings, and the WPL have all modified the sport virtually past recognition.

It may turn into even greater due to this World Cup, which opens with the match between the 2 hosts, India and Sri Lanka, right here on the Barsapara Stadium on Tuesday.

India is without doubt one of the favourites, and Australia’s captain Alyssa Healy by no means misses a chance to make it some extent.

Whether she likes it or not, the Aussies are the overwhelming favourites. They are the defending champions and are an extremely robust all-round aspect, that includes the extra skilled gamers like Beth Mooney, Ellyse Perry, Ashleigh Gardner and Megan Schutt and the youthful ones equivalent to Annabel Sutherland and Phoebe Litchfield.

But, there’s something in what Healy mentioned: the Women in Blue have the gamers — together with a Smriti Mandhana in purple scorching type — the house circumstances, and the momentum to win a first-ever World Cup. If they handle to try this, it might be one other huge enhance to the sport within the nation.

Former champion England, regardless of the collection losses to Australia and India, has sufficient high quality to be a contender. South Africa and New Zealand also needs to be eyeing a spot within the final 4. Sri Lanka can’t be taken evenly, whereas Pakistan and Bangladesh could be eager to spring a shock or two.

And keep in mind, this World Cup presents extra prize-money than the 2023 males’s ODI World Cup.