Women's T20 World Cup 2020

[sussexpob]

I think that women's cricket in India is a giant beginning to wake. They are going to be the force to counter in a decade or so

I think 10 years ago you could have given me a £1 million pounds and I could have turned whatever nation you cared to give me from the top 20 ranked ladies teams into world champions in less than 12 months. You'd only have needed to pay them enough to quit their day jobs, get somewhere to practice, get them working on fitness everyday, and get them a good quality coaching. That alone I would guess would have beaten hands down the best "naturally gifted" side of amateurs in a very short space of time.

Does that sort of environment exist in the ladies game now? To a certain extent, yes it does. Its only natural when a sport is yet to be fully optimized, that any team that is able to do something someone else cant easily, can gain a quick advantage. Its a plain reality that women's cricket does not operate yet to the full standard of full professionalization, and while Australia are the closest to achieve this as yet, you could still say 27500AUD a year for the lowest earners might put off some ladies from other careers, or you might still operate with facilities that arent to the highest level. So assuming you have enough resources, yes, in theory you could go a couple of levels higher up and firebomb the Aussie team back down to second best.

But is that level of investment realistic? The Aussies are miles out in front and only seem to want to push further out of sight. Can someone like India compete? Obviously in India with lower wages and costs, you dont need to match investments in actual terms, so India would be able to get more bang with their buck should they choose to invest more into the ladies game. Just on a figure from google, the average wage currently is 32,200INR or 400USD a month, so paying 5,000USD a year might be enough for people to choose cricket as a profession, and for a relatively small investment you can build a stock of full time players. But then pushing this to a new level and rewarding players with increase quality, pushes the required investment into higher and higher territories; and lets be frank, we are not at a stage yet where the ladies game outside of major final matches can justify paying what the Aussies are, to challenge that you have to strip money from your mens revenue and contribute it to the ladies teams, or make a loss.

It feels like Australia have been the first to commit fully, and have done so to a level that is very difficult for a lot of boards. New Zealand's cricket board for instance has committed to increase women's wages, but they have made losses in recent years, they cant continue to sustain disproportionate cost ratios to income on the ladies game (in fact their losses mirror about their investment, so the cash they have pledged to their women was something they didnt have to offer). Even the ECB might find itself in total dire straits financially if the 100 flops, and may not be able to afford the pledges they have made. And they are a relatively rich cricket board, others simply cant.

I'd be surprised if anyone can wrestle Australia's grip at the top of the womens game, in fact since the last financial plan came into play very recently, the gap if anything has increased by an absolute country mile. And its too early too see the effects of that.

I personally can see this only being the start of an Aussie whitewash of the women's game, and one that may take a generation or two to break down.

[Durhamfootman]

If any nation has the potential to catch up and overtake Australia, then it is India. Once their board gets excited about the marketing potential of something they run with it and they run with it faster than anybody else. Unfortunately, in order to get the BCCI excited their team probably needed to win that final. An opportunity missed for the current crop of players.

[GarlicJam]

Women's sport, in terms of publicity/broadcasting, is on an unprecedented upward march. I reckon some in the BCCI are getting excited already about the potential for Rupees to be made from the women's game/competitions.

Increases in monies to be made leads directly to investment which will lead to increased professionalism and standards.

2030 seems a long way away, maybe, but India will be a force by then. Money and time is all they need. They have the greatest resource: huge numbers of personnel and talent.

[sussexpob]

Women's sport, in terms of publicity/broadcasting, is on an unprecedented upward march. I reckon some in the BCCI are getting excited already about the potential for Rupees to be made from the women's game/competitions. Increases in monies to be made leads directly to investment which will lead to increased professionalism and standards

The BCCI makes pretty much all of its profit margin (I read 95%) on things related to the IPL, which itself is popular and a success based on its ability to attract global names to the tournament. Its hard to see how the BCCI could replicate this model for a women's domestic tournament, because the truth is there is no one capable of justifying the massive increase in expense in setting the tournament infrastructure up, because the ladies game has no players of a similar household stature as the men. You might argue in Australia at the moment some (Healy/Lanning) are widely known, but this is only 2 players at best, and does it cross over to India (unlikely)? Healy et al also make ridiculous money compared to the Indian ladies, so even assuming a tournament can be set up, would Australian's want to go out to India and play in it for less money than they are earning currently? Because its pretty unlikely in a sustainable business model that the BCCI would be matching those 6 figure contracts the Aussie internationals are on; unless they are willing to take massive losses sustained over years until revenue streams prove to be profitable (or if).

Even if we were to compare it to say the WBBL, the average attendance for a WBBL game was 2,300 people last year, which seems to include the odd game that massively boosts the number (shared final with the mens, Sydney derby attracted a very large crowd). None of the first 5 matches got anywhere near that figure, in fact some had attendances of 400 people; and this is in a country that is providing more investment than anywhere, more facilities, the top players. If 400 people turn up to a game, and your talent is earning let's say 10,000AUD on average per match/per person spread over 30 players in both squads, then its not hard to see the catastrophic loss in play. To put that average into perspective too, its lower than Barrow Town FC manage in non-league English football; a team from rural Leicestershire from a town of 5,000 inhabitants.

From an international perspective, its also difficult to see how the BCCI can generate profits from the ladies game currently. For a start, only Australia and England's teams are full-time professionals, so getting teams to play in your country is pretty difficult when sides might have things like jobs to look after. And then think of how many of these sides have the money or capability to send a full squad out to India for a series, the costs involved etc. Of course, you could argue that the boards should be taking their surplus form the men's game to boost the ladies, but as I said yesterday, some of the top teams in the world are cash strapped, NZs board are continually losing money, and none big 3 teams are in serious bad health. And would India's public be interested in seeing Australia's current team continually steam roller them game after game? I cant find the figures, but I doubt the ladies Ashes was a roaring success by the end, considering the lopsided gap in quality.

[sussexpob]

It might sound negative, but good business growth models have to be tested not only for how sustainable successes can be, but how durable they are in different conditions. I have read many people proclaiming the final to be a massive success, which lets face it, you'd have to be flat out crazy to deny. 10 years ago to have 80,000 people attend a women's only cricket event would have been almost unbelievable, it has been proven now that the seemingly impossible is possible. But that doesnt mean that such occurrences are repeatable or in anywhere near representative of a norm. And often, these sorts of numbers have certain factors that boost them.

I mean, lets be honest here, the final featured a concert by one of the biggest selling pop stars in the world. I took my daughters to watch Taylor Swift when she played in Antwerp,and it cost me a bomb. If Katy Perry was playing a gig at the end of a football match here and a ticket cost 20 Euros for the whole family and wasnt sold out, Id have took them. How many people bought tickets for that reason? It might sound implausible, but just check its nearest sporting comparison; the second most watched sporting event in the world, the superbowl, has audience viewership that spikes massively just for the half time show. Most people only tune in to see Maroon 5 dance around for 10 minutes and turn off when the sport comes on. Do you sell as many tickets if they arent heavily discounted? Do you sell as many tickets if its not the home team v the biggest cricketing nation with a big away following? How many tickets get sold if its Thailand v South Africa, at 50 dollars a pop, with no Katy Perry? Does it even break 10,000? Is it therefore sustainable and indicative of the sort of this being possible in normal circumstances?

A good parallel is the A.Madrid women's team, who to much fanfare last year broke the record for attendance at a ladies domestic football matcrh when over 60,000 people turned up for their title decider against Barcelona. Ignored by everyone proclaiming this to be some massive surge in interest in the ladies game, the ticket came for free for anyone who bought a men's one, the half time show featured the team's hall of fame presentation (which usually sell masses of tickets for just that event itself) and was a title decider one of game. Last week v Sociedad, they got 900 people turn up at home, which considering they are in a title run with Barcelona again and are currently 2nd, is pretty abysmal. It seems 99% percent of people went for the half time event, or went because it cost nothing. Take either away, no one wants to go.

So before we get carried away about this massive surge in women's cricket or football, it is very important to note that we are talking in 99.9% cases of a very small sport that mostly operates without financial independence, at a massive loss, and only able to sustain itself on shared facilities or resources from more profitable male sports. So if you want to make policy to grow these sports and put more investment in, you have to have that in mind.

You cant keep throwing cash at women's sport using one off examples that hardly ever replicate. The truth is, English 7th tier division football aside from 1 game that blows the lid off, attracts more spectators than most La Liga womens teams. Barrow Town FC cant pay people 4 figures a week, so people expecting cricket boards to flash down 7 figure wage bills on sides that attract crowds of a few people arent exactly operating in reality. The women's game is growing very well, but it still has to operate on what it is, which is a small cottage industry. When Ada Hegerberg bangs on about not wanting to play because she doesnt earn enough as men, it does seem laughable she expects to get paid £20 million a year like Messi, when the biggest ladies score league on the continent averages 3,000 people a game.

And remember thats 3,000 a game paying far, far less than the average. Barrow Town FC tickets cost £15, the ladies FA Cup QF between 1st/2nd place Arsenal v Spurs, also a massive rivalry, are £2 for kids and £7.50 for adults. And thats their top pricing tier, the lowest games in the league are half that. The mens side cheapest ticket is nearly £50 quid. So its also necessary when factoring in investment to consider the fact that these lower attendances are also generating significantly lower revenue, as the pricing structure is made low to boost attendances as much as possible. Assuming an average ticket sale for the aforementioned game, you end up making a revenue per match that is akin to being less than £1000 per player, with only a match on average once every 5 weeks at home over the year.

At what point does that investment start to give returns, assuming you have to pay these ladies professional wages? 25 ladies on 30,000 quid a year is 750,000 wage bill for a season, lets say. At £7.50 a ticket, you have to sell 100,000 just to pay your wage bill. At current average attendances, thats 33-34 matches you have to host a year, which is probably more than double the actual amount. Thats before any costs.

So you could argue the investment levels to revenue returns are already pretty damn crazy. Expecting more investment and higher salary when the leagues are already run at crazy losses, are you just creating more cost, or are you creating more return? Because at current, its the former

[GarlicJam]

Regardless of all of this, the game for women in India is going to grow, and probably exponentially, and India will be a force soonish, imo.

[sussexpob]

Regardless of all of this, the game for women in India is going to grow, and probably exponentially, and India will be a force soonish, imo.

Assuming tomorrow the BCCI decided to create a women's IPL equivalent, they would only have 15 barely professional cricketers to choose from, of which only 3 or 4 truly elite in the team have contracts that could actually be considered properly professional in nature. If you needed say 128 players for a team of 16 women spread over 8 teams, then that is a massive amount of players you have to conjure up from nowhere, and in the absence of much of a domestic scene to actually judge a players worth, it would be pretty difficult to come up with that many bodies.

Now you could say you bolster it with foreign players, but what are these foreign players going to do to a bunch of amateurs? As an example, Sophie Ecclestone, the current ranked no1 bowler in the world, averages 21 and 19 a wicket vs Australia/India, when you get to rank 3 NZ its single figures. In fact most teams past the very best handful can barely bat out a ball to her, with single figure averages for wickets. And this is against lesser international teams prime line ups, if the top 5 bats in Pakistan can barely score a run off her, what is the 130th best batter in India going to manage having never played a match outside their state? The likelihood is, a world class new ball bowler would probably rip a side to shreds and render any competition over within the first handful of overs. This trend is not specific to Ecclestone either, it replicates with most of the top bowlers averaging very low against anything but the best teams.

If you trigger the league before the players are ready, you could end up with a terrible competition full of terrible cricket. Currently, the feature T20 league in India played over a weekend and is made up of imaginary teams split from the national setup into three teams, who play a few games in the same stadium until a winner is found. On a state level a competition exists, but its not an actual competition of sorts; the same team has won 11 out of the 12 editions, and this year retained the title without coming close to losing (Railways).

Its a massive jump for the talent around, and you cant rush that. The league would only get one chance to make a first impression, if its terrible and punters turn off, youve just shelled out millions of dollars on a giant white elephant project that dies; and once bitten, twice shy.The timing has to be right.

I remember a few years ago when Sussex had a lot of English ladies in the national team. These were all playing at university when I was younger, then they gravitated to club cricket, then women's county teams started to arrive and give them better access to coaching. There was a process, its taken 20 odd years to get that in place, to get those standards up. You can go for the big bang approach and do it all in the blink of an eye, but I cant see it working. They have to plant the seeds, gradual improvement. India are already 5 or 6 years behind Australia. Even assuming they had the same money now, they are growing something from nothing. The idea India could be in a position parallel to the Aussies in a matter of 4 years seems unrealistic, and 10 is more possible, but unlikely.

[sussexpob]

They have the greatest resource: huge numbers of personnel and talent.

To link the last point I will make on the subject to this; yeah, India have a cricket mad population and endless people who play or are exposed to the game, more than multiples of other countries combined. But in sport, developing talent doesnt occur at adult level, in fact depending on who you exactly believe the most important stage is around 12-13 or 5-6 years of age, depending on the study. If you want to put a system in place to start unleashing your potential, it has to therefore be done at grassroots level; through the history of football World Cups, winners are often linked to sporting cultural changes or policies that were made 10-15 years before, as thats when the effects are noticed at adult level.

So having a one stage structure for the professional game where you pour everything into that hoping then to dominate; as I said, if you believe the established wisdom on the subject, it would indicate the damage is already done. Rather than rushing an IPL type league, India's main priority should, imo, be to revamp grassroots systems for girls, get state sides formed and going strong, then think about creating a competition.

For the record, the BCCI I believe hold a similar view and say they will only trigger a IPL style competition for women once standards lower down improve; but its arguable whether the calls for it to come now can be ignored.