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.

Women's #WT20 Group Stages Review

Random thoughts on Shrubsole, South Africa & video highlights...

Anya Shrubsole

They say in football that the table never lies, so let's take a look at the 'Player Points' table from the Women's Cricket Blog Fantasy League:

Player	Points
Anya Shrubsole	390
Suzie Bates	303
Dane van Niekerk	295
Meg Lanning	297
Sarah Coyte	260
Mithali Raj	254
Shabnim Ismail	245
Natalie Sciver	236
Salma Khatun	231
Tremayne Smartt	230

The points system should be fairly balanced (it was tested against the last WWT20) but this time one name is way out in front - Anya Shrubsole is, as the players themselves say, quite literally on fire. And although England's latest kit revamp may give the impression that everybody is 'quite literally' on fire, I think it might also have something to do with the hard yards we hear she's been putting-in at the gym since she came back from Australia.

South Africa

When I spoke to South African captain Mignon du Preez last Christmas, I suggested it was very early days for this team, and that a realistic target might be to take a shot at the 2017 (or even the 2021?) World Cup? She pretty-much agreed, so getting to a WWT20 semi-final in 2014 - 3 years before they are aiming to peak - is clearly massive, and you could see it on the faces of the players at the end of the New Zealand game.

Prior to the tournament I debated with some people on Twitter about whether the traditional 'Big 4' (England, Australia, New Zealand & India) had now become a 'Big 5' including West Indies? Or whether indeed West Indies had replaced India in a new 'Big 4'? But now it looks like that's a door South Africa are going to be knocking on very, very soon too! Though given they are playing England in their semi-final... not too soon please Minx ;-)

Video Highlights

I'm sure the ICC think they are doing us all a massive favour with their 3 minute highlights, and I guess they are better than nothing... but frankly it's a close call. There is no commentary or sub-titles, the cameras all seem to be at ground level, and the picture quality is terrible. In this day and age, it really isn't good enough for a show-case tournament and someone needs to stand up and say so! Which I guess is my way of standing up and saying so.. for what little that's worth! (Hint: not much!)

Women's Cricket Set To Become A Winter Sport

Following the model successfully pioneered by women's football's, which recently shifted to the summer so as not to clash with the men's game, the ECB are today announcing plans to relaunch women's cricket as a winter sport, running from October through to March.

The new schedule will mean that venues such as The Oval and Old Trafford, which have traditionally lain vacant for much of the year, will now see cricket all year round, as the women move in over the winter months.

The first new-look women's cricket season will begin in October 2014 with a round of county matches, and culminate in a showpiece T20 Finals Day broadcast live on Sky at the end of March 2015.

International matches will be scheduled over the Christmas period, taking advantage of prime-time holiday TV audiences, and raising the enticing possibility of a Boxing Day Test taking place at Lords for the first time ever.

Clare Connor, Head of Women's Cricket at the ECB, said: "This is brilliant news for the players; plus we'll save a fortune on Danni Wyatt's sunglasses. And if anyone gets cold, they can just put another jumper on!"

England captain Charlotte Edwards said: "Well... look..." before being led away by medical staff to undergo acclimatization training inside an old American-style refrigerator, which head coach Paul Shaw is rumored to have snapped-up for thirty quid on e-bay.

Women's #WT20 Predictions

If we've learned one thing in the past year... and (in the immortal words of Homer Simpson) we haven't... it's that I'm terrible at predictions. I predicted that Australia would win the 2013 Ashes and the 2014 Ashes. As the kids say* - Hash-tag Epic Fail!

So what did you think when you voted? Well, the poll results are in, and here they are:

Australia by a length then!

But I'm not so sure!

England are always going to be in with a shout, especially if Anya Shrubsole can stay fit (admittedly a big 'if') and reproduce the 4-wicket form she showed in the final warm-up game.

I wouldn't read too much into New Zealand's disastrous performance in that game though - strange things happen psychologically when it starts to go south, and you know in your heart-of-hearts that it doesn't really matter; and what happened today will not happen again!

I would read a lot more into the West Indies match against Australia though, mainly because of THAT innings from Deandra Dottin - 78 from 48 balls - a strike rate of over 160!

When Dottin is on-form, she can do what no one else in women's cricket can - hit the big, big shots that can change the game in the blink of an eye. And boy was she on form today, against the strongest bowling attack in the tournament!

That's why my heart says England, but in my head... I'm going for a West Indies win!

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* Apparently!

POLL: Who Will Win The Women's #WT20?

• Australia - Current T20 World Champs; and though they lost The Ashes, they won the concluding T20 mini-series 2-1.
• Bangladesh - Long shots, but could home advantage be a factor?
• England - With Charlotte Edwards opening the batting, and Sarah Taylor behind the stumps, you can never discount them, but without Brunt, Marsh and Colvin, do they have the bowling to back up their batting?
• India - One of the traditional big four, but they've played very little cricket recently and a semi-final would be a good result for them.
• Ireland - The weakest team in the tournament on paper - but a recent win against Pakistan will give them some confidence that they can at least compete.
• New Zealand - Will be on a high, having just whitewashed the West Indies at home - and in Suzie Bates they have a potential match-winner who can take on all-comers.
• Pakistan - Beat South Africa to win the recent Tri-Nations tournament in Qatar, but subsequently lost their final warm-up match to Bangladesh.
• South Africa - An up-and-coming side who are moving towards professionalism, but realistically their target will be to ensure automatic qualification for the next tournament by coming 3rd in their group and winning the play-off.
• Sri Lanka - Shocked England in the ODI World Cup a year ago and will at least be familiar with the kind of pitches we'll be seeing in Bangladesh. Still long odds though.
• West Indies - Recently white-washed by New Zealand, but they'll be a different team with Dottin and Stephanie Taylor back - definitely potential finalists!

 So, who do YOU think will win...

Fantasy Women's #WT20

This week has seen the launch of the Women's Cricket Blog Fantasy Women's World T20 - an online game which allows you to pick your own Women's Cricket Dream Team and follow them through the upcoming World T20 in Bangladesh!

The game was devised by Martin Davies of http://womens-cricket.blogspot.co.uk/ and programmed by me - a rare (and welcome) opportunity to bring home my day job, writing computer software!

Our goal was to create something really simple - no budgets, no tinkering - you just chose your team and then sit back and watch them (hopefully) rack-up points over the course of the tournament.

To kick things off, Martin invited a select group of cricketing celebs to submit their teams to an 'Experts' league - I was delighted (and flattered) to see entries from the likes of George Dobell and Arran Brindle.

For my team, I've gone for:

Batsman - Mithali Raj (Ind), Sara McGlashan (NZ), Deandra Dottin (WI), Mignon du Preez (SA)
All-Rounders - Ellyse Perry (Aus), Stafanie Taylor (WI)
Wicketkeeper - Sarah Taylor (Eng)
Bowlers - Danni Hazell (Eng), Morna Neilsen (NZ), Moseline Daniels (SA), Jhulan Goswami (Ind)

Think you can do better? Hop over to the game and have a go! (There's even a small prize for the winners - 3 pairs of tickets for the England/India Test this summer, kindly donated by the folks at Wormsley Cricket.)

Click Here To Create Your Fantasy Team!

TV Coverage of Women's #WT20

The ICC have officially confirmed that live TV coverage of the Women's World T20 will be limited to the semi-finals and final - just 3 of the 27 games which comprise the competition. Instead, there will be brief (3 minutes) highlights of all games made available on-line.

Having spoken to a couple of sources, the reasons for this are slightly convoluted, albeit familiar to anyone who follows this blog and is au fait with the situation regarding broadcast rights for women's cricket in England.

Basically, the rights to the entire tournament (men's and women's) were sold as a single, exclusive package. Having purchased that package, the rights-holder (Star Sports*) made the commercial decision not to cover the women's group games; and because the contract is exclusive, that meant no one else could either.

When they sell the broadcast rights, the one right the ICC retain is to sell brief highlights packages to news organizations; and it is those highlights which we will be seeing - their brevity reflecting the terms of the ICC's retained rights, which are really intended for use in news bulletins.

This is obviously a massive disappointment to women's cricket fans who want to follow their teams; and (you'd assume) the players themselves, who would have been hoping to showcase their sport on one of cricket's biggest stages.

What this emphasizes (yet again) is the folly of selling the men's and women's rights as a single package. The men's rights are obviously where the big money is, and I doubt Star Sports would have paid a penny less for just the men's tournament; which could have meant the BBC (or someone) stepping in for the women's tournament and actually providing the coverage which the fans desperately want.

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* I believe!