Women's cricket


Women's cricket is the team sport of cricket when played by women. Its
rules are almost identical to those in the game played by men, the main change being the use of a smaller ball. Women's cricket is beginning to be played at professional level in 11 of the 12 full members of the International Cricket Council, and is played worldwide, especially in Commonwealth nations.
File:Southern Stars vs West Indies women's cricket.jpg|thumb|Australian batter Meg Lanning plays a sweep shot while Merissa Aguilleira of the West Indies keeps wicket during the 2014 West Indies tour of Australia at the North Sydney Oval.
The first recorded cricket match between women was held in England on 26 July 1745. The game continued to be played socially by women until clubs for women were formed in the late 1800s. In 1926, the creation of the Women's Cricket Association in England began the process of formalising the game and organising international matches. Like many women's sports, the further development of women's cricket was hampered by sexism and a lack of structural support.
Although women have historically played Test cricket and first class cricket, the focus of the women's game in the last 50 years has been mostly on limited overs cricket. The introduction of Twenty20 cricket in 2003 created more opportunities for the growth of the women's game. As well as competing against each other in tours, national teams also compete in several tournaments, including the Cricket World Cup and the T20 World Cup. Women's cricket has also been part of several multi-sport events.
In domestic cricket, many countries have T20 cricket and List A cricket competitions that are run either alongside or separately from men's competitions. Grass roots cricket is growing, especially in England and Australia, although many barriers still remain. Cricket boards often organise competitions that use new formats that are intended to appeal to women. Cricket for women with disabilities is also growing, especially in South Asia.

History

The first recorded cricket match between women was reported in The Reading Mercury on 26 July 1745; the match was contested "between eleven maids of Bramley and eleven maids of Hambledon, all dressed in white". The first known women's cricket club the White Heather Club was formed in 1887 in Yorkshire. Three years later, a team known as the Original English Lady Cricketers toured England, reportedly making substantial profits before the manager absconded with the money.
In Australia, a women's cricket league was set up in 1894 and Port Elizabeth, South Africa, had a women's cricket team named the Pioneers Cricket Club. In Canada, a women's cricket team in Victoria played at Beacon Hill Park.
In India, cricket teams for women existed as early as the 1920s. Delhi Ladies Cricket Club beat the men's Marylebone Cricket Club in a half-day game on their 1926–27 tour of India, one of the only matches they lost on the tour. Because it was a women's team, the game is omitted from records of the tour. During the 1950s and 1960s, cricket was strongest in the urban centres Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. The most-notable club in this period is Albees in Mumbai; many Albees players were female family members of prominent men's Test cricketers.
In 1958, the International Women's Cricket Council was formed to co-ordinate women's cricket around the world, taking over from the English Women's Cricket Association, which had been working in a de facto role since its creation 32 years earlier. In 2005, the IWCC was merged with the International Cricket Council to form a unified body to manage and develop cricket.

Laws and gameplay

Language

Much of the language of cricket is heavily gendered; terms such as maiden over, nightwatchman, and third man are not officially sanctioned but remain in colloquial use. In 2021, the Marylebone Cricket Club amended the rulebook, the Laws of Cricket, to replace the term "batsman" with the term "batter" to better reflect the modern game. There was some derision in parts of the cricketing and wider press but others responded that the term "batter" had been in widespread use through much of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Rule modifications

In The Laws of Cricket, the only explicit difference between men's and women's cricket is the ball size. According to The Laws of Cricket:
For comparison, the ball in the men's game should weigh between, and be between in circumference. Many tournaments and forms of cricket, however, have additional differences in rules between women's and men's games.
File:Cricket field M&W.svg|alt=A diagram showing the difference in sizes in a men's and women's cricket field|thumb|The pitch and close infield is the same size in both the men's and women's games. The infield is smaller but, because the outfield is a range, there's an overlap between the largest women's field and the smallest men's field.

Test cricket

In the 2023 ICC rules, the main differences from the men's games are:
  • Three umpires are sufficient in many cases, and they may be appointed by the Home Board. This is to increase the number of women umpires at the highest level. In the men's game, all four umpires must be appointed by the ICC from their list of Elite Umpires.
  • Except for on the last day, play must continue until a minimum of 100 overs, or 17 overs per hour, have been completed. For the men's game, the minimum is 90 overs total or 15 per hour.
  • On the last day, 83 overs must be completed. The men's game mandates 75 overs.
  • If play is delayed, e.g. because of rain, the minimum overs are reduced by one for each 3.52 minutes lost whereas in the men's game, the reduction is one over per four minutes of delay.
  • Follow-on can be enforced with a lead of 150 runs. In a men's Test, the lead needed for a follow-on is 200 runs.
  • Boundaries must not be "longer than 70 yards, and no boundary should be shorter than 60 yards from the centre of the pitch". The boundaries in the men's game are larger with a minimum of 65 yards and a maximum of 90 yards.
  • A fielder who is absent for more than eight minutes may be penalised no more than 110 minutes. The maximum time penalty in the men's game is 120 minutes.

    One Day International cricket

According to the June 2023 ICC rules for One Day International matches, the main differences are:
  • Umpires may be local, i.e., not from an impartial third country.
  • The innings break can be between 30 and 45 minutes whereas in the men's game, any interval may be no longer than 30 minutes. The two drinks breaks are only 60 minutes apart instead of 70 minutes in the men's game.
  • For a women's ODI, the game is expected to be two sessions of three hours and ten minutes with an over rate of 15.79 overs per hour. In the men's game, each session is expected to be three-and-a-half hours with an over rate of 14.28 per hour.
  • As in Test cricket, the boundaries must be between 60 yards and 70 yards.
  • The same difference in penalty times for a fielder as in Test cricket.
  • The infield is set at 25.15 yards, whereas it is 30 yards for men.
  • There's one powerplay that is identical to the men's first powerplay. After that, only four fielders are allowed in the outfield. Unlike the men's game, a women's ODI does not have a third powerplay with an additional fielder in the outfield. If the duration of the game is reduced, for example due to rain, the method of calculating the number of overs in the powerplay is slightly different between the two games.

    Twenty20 International cricket

According to the June 2023 ICC rules, the main differences are:
  • As with Test and ODI cricket, umpires may be local.
  • Intervals between innings are 15 minutes long compared to 20 minutes in a men's T20 match.
  • The expectation is each session of a match will be of 75 minutes with a minimum over rate of 16 overs per hour. In the men's game, an over rate of 14.11 per hour is expected and each session is of 85 minutes.
  • The boundaries are again set at between 60 yards and 70 yards.
  • Penalty time for a fielder absent from the field of play for more than eight minutes is a maximum of 35 minutes and for the men it is 40 minutes.
  • The infield is set at 25.15 yards and is set at 30 yards for men.
  • For overs that are not part of the powerplay, four fielders are permitted in the outfield whereas men are permitted five fielders.

    Clothing and equipment

Initially, like men, women played cricket in clothes that were similar to their everyday wear. With changes in womenswear in the late Victorian period, clothes for middle-and-upper-class women to undertake physical activity became more available. The Rational Dress Society had an outfit for cricket in its 1883 catalogue.
During the interwar period, women's sportswear became more available and the Women's Cricket Association encountered something they named "the clothing problem". The debate about what women should wear when playing cricket was intense; a debate about it can be found in the minutes of every Annual General Meeting of the WCA from its foundation until its last AGM before World War II. There was tension between the needs of female players who wished to wear comfortable, practical clothing, and the need to appear as "respectable" women to the public and to the male establishment who owned the cricket grounds. There was also anxiety about women cross-dressing and the need to maintain gender roles while playing sport.
Photographs in the British press in the early 20th century often showed women playing cricket with bare legs and in bathing costumes but most played in more-practical clothing. Rules about women playing in white dresses and skirts were imposed on high-level women's cricket but in local games, it was common to play in flannels of any colour.
Following England's first tour of Australia and New Zealand, the England, Australia and New Zealand teams adopted the white divided skirts as part of their uniforms. England continued to play in skirts until 1997. Diving for the ball in a skirt risked injury and friction burns. The move to trousers eliminated this danger for women players, and the tan lines between the bottom of the skirts and the socks. The New Zealand team were given a sewing pattern and fabric, and were expected to make their uniforms or have them made.
File:INDIA CRICKET.jpg|thumb|upright=0.6|A member of the India team at the 2009 Women's Cricket World Cup. She wears the same trousers, long sleeve shirt and cap as the men's uniform.
According to the 2023 ICC rules, the rules on men's and women's attire in international cricket are identical. The only gender-specific clothing rule allows cricketers to wear hijab in ICC events provided it does not obscure any logos and names on the playing uniform. For Test matches, scarves must be black or white but for ODIs and T20s, they can be black or the same colour as the team cap but they cannot be white.
Appropriate equipment has long been an issue for women in cricket. Players have often had to use poorly fitting small men's or juniors equipment, which impeded performance. England wicket keeper Betty Snowball avoided this problem by having her gloves and pads custom made. Many women players prefer smaller, lighter bats. Labeling of equipment has been exclusionary; equipment for children has been labelled as "boys" but this has begun to change. Present and former cricketers, such as Lydia Greenway, Ellyse Perry and Heather Knight, have been involved with leading changes in the design of equipment for women. The brands Kookaburra, SM Cricket, Viking, Gray-Nicolls and JPGavan all now produce equipment intended for women. The brands NEXX and Lacuna Sports have been launched in the UK to provide clothing and equipment to women who play cricket.