Pakistan’s captain is back playing in the Women’s World Cup, having brought her six-month-old daughter Fatima with herIt is more than 33 years ago since Neneh Cherry swaggered around the Top of the Pops stage in big white trainers performing Buffalo Stance with the fierce energy of a woman who was having a fine old time and wanted everyone to know about it. Around her neck hung a huge medallion and she wore a golden bustier and matching jacket. But it wasn’t her outfit that was the talking point at secondary school the next day – but the seven-month pregnancy bump that stuck proudly out of her Lycra miniskirt as she lip-synched along.It was the first time many of us...
From the Olympics to the oche, women trained, performed and competed on the same stage as men in a breakthrough yearIt was one of the most heartwarming images of the Tokyo Olympics. In the aftermath of the women’s BMX final, the newly minted gold medallist Beth Shriever sat slumped on the track in front of a metal barrier, her legs splayed uselessly in front of her. She had pumped every last drop from them to see off the world No 1, Mariana Pajón, in a thrilling chase to the line. Now they couldn’t even lift her to her feet.Within seconds, her GB teammate Kye Whyte was at her side. Whyte had taken silver in the men’s race that preceded Shriever’s,...
It turns out that lowering the average testosterone levels of a sporting crowd really can make a differenceCricket’s culture wars can call a truce. There is something traditionalists and progressives agree on, and rather surprisingly it’s about the Hundred. Now the all-important final scores are in – and we’re talking bums-on-seats and eyes-on-screen, not who hit most sixes or which weird-named franchise triumphed – there is consensus on a single, indisputable fact. The tournament was A Good Thing for women’s cricket.For the hardcore sceptics, the grudging concession that the Hundred has been a gamechanger for women will not outweigh the collective trauma the competition has cost them. The undeniable benefits the women’s game has derived from the format – the...
Supremely talented 17-year-old should make the BCCI realise how big the women’s game could beJust as more people saw Jim Laker whistle out 19 for 90 at Old Trafford and Ian Botham bristle 149 at Headingley than could possibly have fitted in the ground even stacked cheek to jowl and on top of each other, you suspect Bristol County Ground will have been rather fuller in retrospect than it was last week. Not because it was the first time India had played a Test for seven years or because of the cricket itself, which was excellent, but because of the Test debut of a 17-year-old superstar in the making.Shafali Verma made 96 and 63 and was named player of the...
There is unprecedented visibility now but the sport misses the female leaders pushed away when the ECB took over in 1998Almost three decades ago, on 1 August 1993, a 17-year-old Claire Taylor made her way through the Grace Gates for the first time. That day, she watched an England team led by Karen Smithies defeat New Zealand by 67 runs in the Women’s World Cup final. The players wore skirts, they were all amateurs who had to take time off work to compete, and the idea of prize money was unthinkable.Last week Taylor was back at Lord’s, now a proud MCC member, the chair of the MCC cricket committee, and with two World Cup winner’s medals in her trophy cabinet....