Heading to the World Cup

I have just finished typing all the World Cup games into the WCB Women's Cricket Fixtures calendar [you will find them here if you need them], which got me thinking about how England might fare and how the tournament, as a whole, might pan out. It all starts in 8 weeks........and about 4 weeks later Australia will be World Champions for the eighth time.

Is it really that clear cut? Is it really that much of a foregone conclusion? Should I be putting my life-savings on Australia to win the 13th Edition of the Women's Cricket World Cup? Well, probably not.

Cricket, as they say, is a funny game, and the tournament is being played in the sub-continent, on pitches that should suit spin bowlers, and batters that are nimble of foot and agile in mind. It would not surprise me if Sri Lanka, Pakistan or Bangladesh cause a few upsets, but they are unlikely to win the tournament. Given that all the eight teams play each other, and then the top four go into the semi-finals, this is a tournament about consistency. You need to win more games than you lose. In fact in the last edition West Indies qualified for the semi-finals with a 3-3 record, having had one game called off. This time they have not even made the competition. 

Consistency should reward the "better teams". So you would expect Australia, India and England to win more games than they lose. I think the last slot might just go to Pakistan, who are playing all their games at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, in Sri Lanka, so do not have the travel issues that all the other teams face, and will be playing every game on the same pitch. This is a huge advantage. Some might say so big that it is unfair?

So from the group stage it becomes a simple knockout tournament, where the best team on the day will win. In T20 cricket this can often be on the performance of one individual, but that is less likely in 50 over cricket, although it can happen - Chamari Athapaththu, Harmanpreet Kaur and Anya Shrubsole spring to mind. One day cricket tends to be much more of a team performance and this favours Australia and India, so, provided they avoid each other in the semi-final, these would be my two teams in the final.

And so to the final. India playing in front of 40,000 screaming Indians in the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangaluru. The pressure on them will be enormous. It is not something they have dealt with well in the past, and despite the pressures of playing in front of large crowds in the WPL, it might just prove too much for them again. 

So what of England? They are a "new team", under a new coach and a new captain. The problem is that they are not really a "new team" at all. Unfortunately this summer has not seen the blooding of some new players such as Ella MacCaughan, Jodi Grewcock, Charis Pavely or Rhianna Southby. The West Indies series was a golden opportunity to experiment, but it just produced false hope in some of the existing players, which has subsequently been crushed, by not only losing both the T20 and the ODI series to India, but by looking second best in almost every facet of the game. With a genuinely "new team" at the World Cup England might be forgiven for not making the Final. The fact that they might struggle to even make it to the semi-finals with a squad that looks so similar to the one that lost 16-0 to Australia in The Ashes seems an opportunity missed.

But then who knows? England might just go and win the whole thing. I wouldn't be putting my house on that though.

Martin Davies
23/VII/25