Women's #WT20 Wrap-Up

Random thoughts on Fantasy Cricket, Anya Shrubsole, the 'Real' Final and The Game of the Tournament.

Fantasy Cricket

When Martin from Women's Cricket Blog contacted me about putting together a Fantasy Cricket game for this tournament, I thought one of two things might happen: either it would be tumble-weed... or 5 squillion people would all enter at once, crashing my little web server and leaving my reputation for technical competence in tatters!

In the end, 175 people entered, including a nice group of 'Experts' which included the likes of George Dobell and Raf Nicholson from Cricinfo... sorry.... ESPNcricinfo!

And... it was a lot of fun! We'll do it again, for sure; and next time hopefully we'll be able to spice things up even more, with transfers being a popular feature request we'll definitely look to add.

Anyways... congrats to the overall winner: Luff's Legends, with 3041 points - even beating out leading 'Expert' Anthony Morgan, who scored 2856.

Anya Shrubsole

In a way, I don't have anything much to add to what I said after the group stages - Anya basically dragged England to the final single-handed; and she was deservedly Player of the Tournament - a decision backed-up by the Fantasy League stats, where she topped the table with 495 points!

Player	Team	Role	Teams	Points
Anya Shrubsole	England	BOWL	24	495
Suzie Bates	New Zealand	AR	92	403
Sarah Coyte	Australia	BOWL	8	395
Meg Lanning	Australia	BAT	129	362
Mithali Raj	India	BAT	102	303
Dane van Niekerk	South Africa	AR	3	302
Ellyse Perry	Australia	AR	97	301
Charlotte Edwards	England	BAT	92	300
Natalie Sciver	England	AR	14	295
Salma Khatun	Bangladesh	AR	1	293

Crucially also, for the first time in what feels like forever, she actually ended the tournament/ series on the pitch and not in the physio's treatment room - she's in the form of her life, and speaking as an England fan... long may it continue!

The 'Real' Final

While I obviously hoped they might, I never really expected England to win this tournament; so I'm not too disappointed by what happened today.

In fact to be fair, the 'real' final was probably the Australia/West Indies semi - the Southern Stars posted a pretty whopping total of 140; and the WI then came within just 8 runs of chasing it down - giving the Aussies a much closer run for their money than England did in the 'actual' final.

But even that still wasn't the Game of the Tournament though...

The Game of the Tournament

This accolade surely has to go to the South Africa/ New Zealand (de-facto) quarter-final - a wonderfully exciting cricket match that had me quite literally on the edge of my seat, even though all I was watching was a flaky 'live(ish)' text feed from the ICC web site. I wonder how good it would have been to actually see it? I and the rest of the world will, of course, never know.