Let it not be forgotten that the cricketers got there first. In the build-up to this summer’s Women’s T20 World Cup, there has, naturally, been talk of England picking up the baton from the Lionesses and Red Roses and securing success on home soil. “As a fan, I was captured by what they were doing,” captain Nat Sciver-Brunt admitted earlier this year. “What a chance we have to grow the game in England. It’s going to be a really special time.” But she and a couple of her squadmates have already experienced that sort of triumph: Lord’s sold out for England’s day in the sun in the 50-over format in 2017 to catapult women’s cricket into a new era.
The challenge for Sciver-Brunt and co, then, is to do it all over again. While the 2017 World Cup was afforded a certain prestige and prominence, a changing landscape in the nine intervening years has offered both more potential and pressure – where a premature exit then may have been met by a sigh and a shrug, there is a sense of expectation on a home team going deep.
