You wouldn’t be blamed for losing interest pretty quickly whenever the England men’s sports teams are playing in a match. Let’s be honest, we don’t actually win that much, do we? But casually flying under the radar of far too many people are our women’s teams and ICYMI, they’re absolutely smashing it at the moment.
Over the weekend, England the won the Women’s Cricket World Cup which is, of course, incredible in its own right. But what’s particularly exciting about this win is that it happened in front of the largest audience to have ever watched a women’s cricket.
If we take it back a bit, it wasn’t until 1999 when women were allowed to be members of the MCC (the Marlyebone Cricket Club owns the grounds at Lords and is the ‘guardian of the Laws of the game’). Only four years ago when the World Cup was held in India, the global women’s tournament was reportedly relocated from the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai for a few days to accommodate a national men’s match.
Ebony Rainford-Brent, a former batter for England, told BBC Sport: ‘It was shocking in India. In a cricket-crazy country, you would expect to see something – posters, adverts –but there was nothing.
‘The only people in the grounds were a few family members. It was almost like the cricket wasn’t happening’, she added. But it’s safe to say that there was a dramatically different atmosphere at this year’s games. More than 27,000 people filled the stands at Lords on Sunday to watch what England captain Heather Knight described as a transformative performance.
Speaking to The Guardian, Heather said: ‘There’s never been a better time to be a young girl in cricket and what a time to start playing. A lot of girls on the team took inspiration from men’s cricketers or older brothers or their dads, but what a spectacle today was. Hopefully, it gets a few more girls inspired and playing the game’.
A brilliant win for England during the most watched game of women’s cricket in history isn’t the only fantastic sporting news to be aware of though. Our football team, aka the Lionesses, just smashed a match against Spain beating them 2-0 in a crucial match on their quest to secure a spot in the quarter finals (we're at the top of our group at the moment so it's all looking pretty positive).
We've also got the Women's Rugby World Cup on the horizon, which, after England's win in 2014, has already started to garner a fair bit of excitement. Rather disappointingly though, it was also reported today that regardless of whether or not the team win the cup, none of the team's contracts will be renewed. Apparently, of the 50 or so players on full/part-time contracts, only 17 will be singing new ones in September. The move is apparently so that the Rugby Football Union can shift its focus to the Rugby World Cup Sevens next year, however, Barbara Keeley, MP for Worsley and Eccles South, described it as 'a shameful decision'.
The positive thing is though, that we seem to have more eyes on the England women's matches than ever before which, needless to say, has both been a long time coming and a huge testament to the strength of our teams. Let's hope this string of international success only continues and that these incredible women go on to receive recognition that equals that which we give the mens teams (who often don't actually win anything).
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.