ct endorsements (although still unequal to men’s).
But there are clouds over England women’s cricket as over men’s and indeed over cricket worldwide.
Linked barriers of class and race continue to make the game far more accessible to white privately educated girls than to minority ethnic girls and those from low-income families in state schools. Moreover, there is a rural-urban divide: the clubs with thriving women’s and girls’ teams tend to be concentrated in the countryside and suburbs rather than inner cities.
There are major worries too about the survival of long-form cricket for English women. It was in trouble before the pandemic and since then financial imperatives have generated even greater focus on T20, the form which makes far and away the most money. The career of Heather Knight, the present England women’s captain, gives a vivid illustration of the trend. She recently completed 200 international appearances – but just eight of them were women’s Test matches.
Richard Heller’s latest book The Prisoner Of Rubato Towers is an increasingly crazed account of lockdown life in London without cricket.