Balls!

If you're a seasoned cricket-watcher, you might notice something unusual about the photo above, of a T20 match which took place last weekend, during the Women's County T20 Finals: the players are wearing white uniforms and (though you can't actually see it) they are playing with a red ball.

In fact, all domestic women's cricket in this country is "red ball"; which will no doubt please the traditionalists, but is actually a problem for the England team.

This is because international women's cricket is all-but exclusively white ball, due to the vast majority of games being ODI and T20.

This means that when players graduate to the England team, they are suddenly faced with a ball which, in a match situation, is completely alien to them. To quote just one example, this factor (along with the novelty of playing under lights) was mentioned by Katherine Brunt when asked about dropped catches in the T20 at Chelmsford.

I do appreciate that switching to "white ball" cricket isn't a decision that is easily made. You need coloured uniforms (or the ball gets "lost" in the whites) and black sight-screens, which not every club has available.

But nevertheless, perhaps this is something to which the ECB should give some consideration in future?