{"id":767360,"date":"2026-06-29T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/767360\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T08:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:00:10","slug":"womens-t20-world-cup-breaks-cricket-into-mainstream-but-money-still-an-issue-womens-t20-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/767360\/","title":{"rendered":"Women\u2019s T20 World Cup \u2018breaks cricket into mainstream\u2019 but money still an issue | Women’s T20 World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The results are in: England will play South Africa in the T20 World Cup semi-final on Thursday, after Australia face off against West Indies on Tuesday. It all came down to the double-header at Lord\u2019s on Sunday, played in front of a crowd of 27,000, which began with South Africa limping across the line against Bangladesh despite a flurry of late wickets, and ended with India crashing out of the tournament after a six-wicket defeat against Australia.<\/p>\n

This has been a good fortnight for women\u2019s cricket. The tournament director, Beth Barrett-Wild, was upbeat on Sunday. \u201cIt\u2019s been incredible,\u201d she said of the tournament so far. \u201cWe set out on a mission to break women\u2019s cricket into the mainstream, and over the course of the last three weeks we\u2019ve seen record-breaking crowds. I feel like we\u2019ve definitely delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scale of the event dwarfs that of 2017, the last global women\u2019s tournament hosted by England and Wales. Despite extreme heat causing many fans to stay away over the past week, attendance is already double what the England and Wales Cricket<\/a> Board achieved nine years ago \u2013 up around 160,000. Record crowds have been achieved at Edgbaston (18,814 for India v Pakistan) and the Oval (21,018 for England v New Zealand), while the final at Lord\u2019s next Sunday is a sell-out. The presence of ticket touts outside St John\u2019s Wood tube on Sunday, last seen for a women\u2019s game during the 2017 World Cup final, felt like a significant milestone in itself.<\/p>\n

Barrett-Wild said 2017 \u201cwas the first spark of what could be achieved\u201d, but: \u201cWe\u2019ve had multiple instances already through this tournament that have had that same vibe, and the same level of scale, as that one-off moment in 2017 [at Lord\u2019s].\u201d<\/p>\n

It helps that the cricket has been as scorching as the heatwave which hit England last week. This is the first edition of the tournament in which more than one century has been scored: we have had three and counting, from England\u2019s Danni Wyatt-Hodge, Sri Lanka\u2019s Chamari Athapaththu and South Africa\u2019s Tazmin Brits. The idea of a \u201crecord run chase\u201d has essentially become meaningless given how often totals of more than 170 are now being gobbled up for breakfast. On Saturday, Ireland finally broke their 12-year duck by beating West Indies to seal a maiden World Cup win; Scotland came agonisingly close to beating Sri Lanka last week. There are no also-rans here.<\/p>\n

Ashleigh Gardner hits out in Australia\u2019s win against India at Lord’s. Photograph: Jay Patel\/SPP\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been really pleasing just how competitive the cricket has been,\u201d Barrett-Wild said. \u201cComing into the final weekend with everything still on the line in both groups is brilliant, and I think just testament to the growth and development of women\u2019s cricket globally.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is also helpful that England have won every group game, despite the absence of their captain Nat Sciver-Brunt through injury. Barrett-Wild\u2019s recent WhatsApp conversations with the England head coach, Charlotte Edwards, have involved generous use of the thumbs-up emoji. \u201cObviously as tournament director, I\u2019m not allowed to have favourites,\u201d she says. \u201cBut speaking with the ICC, everybody is recognising the power and the impact of the home nation getting into the latter stages of the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

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One challenge for ticket sales is that until Sunday evening no one knew which semi-final England would be playing in, despite the hosts sealing qualification four days earlier. Nowadays, in women\u2019s and men\u2019s cricket it is the demands of Indian broadcasters which dictate the timings of semi-finals: had India qualified, they were always going to play on Tuesday afternoon to ensure a primetime slot back home. If you are reading this and wondering how that\u2019s fair, you aren\u2019t alone. But he who pays the piper calls the tune, as they say; and in this case, that is the Board of Control for Cricket in India.<\/p>\n

For England, then, a minor scheduling irritation. But try being Scotland or the Netherlands. Scotland cannot afford to host bilateral cricket; their women\u2019s team had no sponsor for this World Cup. How do they develop now? Netherlands are a team of amateurs; it is all very well to admire the dedication of Caroline de Lange quitting her job as a doctor to play in this tournament, but perhaps we should be asking why she has to juggle cricket with work in the first place. The ICC has taken the first step: it chose to expand this World Cup from 10 teams to 12. But if it could also arrange to spread cricket\u2019s revenue just a little bit more evenly, wouldn\u2019t we all be better off?<\/p>\n

Next Sunday at Lord\u2019s, England may yet secure their first silverware in almost a decade, bringing untold riches to Sciver-Brunt and her team. But until the International Cricket Council begins to really think globally, there will always be more losers than winners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The results are in: England will play South Africa in the T20 World Cup semi-final on Thursday, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-767360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}