The latest edition of the Indian Premier League kicks off this weekend. It poses some interesting questions. The IPL is gripping, high-grade stuff. Like me you may well end up watching every second of it, even as you complain loudly about the fact that, oh look, you’re watching every second of it.
But starting again? Really? Was there an extended period in the last two years where you could say with any real certainty that the IPL had actually stopped? Perhaps in future it might be easier to assume, unless specifically stated otherwise, that the IPL is still going on. That somewhere in the rolling T20 metaverse the commentator who shouts “wow!” at everything is shouting “wow!” as a man in a shirt daubed with cement manufacturers flat-bats one over cover, that this is simply the engine around which every other moving part rotates now.
But it still feels a week too early. England’s men are still playing a Test match. There’s football happening, because football must always happen. But my main objection to this sudden blotting out of the cricketing sun is that the 50-over Women’s World Cup in New Zealand is in danger of being overshadowed just as it threatens to bubble up into a genuinely gripping endgame.
It has been an absorbing tournament so far, simmering away, gathering depth and layers, and deserving of a free run in its final week. The weekend will see the semi-finalists culled. From the start of next week one of four contenders, South Africa, West Indies, India and England, will have the chance to create a genuine story by beating Australia, who are simply much better than everyone else right now, a team playing with a kind of light around them.
It has been an intriguing tournament for England, and beyond that for one of the most storied English cricketers of the age, a performer of engaging and apparently inexhaustible competitive fury. Katherine Brunt has had a frustrating couple of weeks. Although, to be fair, every week appears to be on some level a frustrating week for a cricketer powered by uncut fast-bowler-grade irritation. This is the natural resting state of Brunt, a bowler for whom every straw is the final straw, whose competitive rage is both endlessly watchable and a driver for one of the great modern-day English sporting careers.
Brunt had bowled poorly in New Zealand before taking three wickets in Thursday’s victory against Pakistan, fruits of some hard-fought technical tinkering in the nets. That win leaves England needing to beat Bangladesh on Saturday to be sure of making the semis, a major turnaround after losing their first three games.
And there has been something wrong with England at this World Cup. They have looked underpowered and muddled, a little soggy in those bleached-out greens and greys down the late night satellite feed. The initial selection looked like a continuity thing: one more dip for the old guard. But this has looked a stodgy crew at times, unathletic and lacking in fizz, the kind of team it’s harder to get in to than out of. The spinners Sophie Ecclestone and Charlie Dean have revived England’s chances. But in terms of wickets and averages England’s new ball attack, Brunt and Anya Shrubsole are two of the least successful bowlers in the tournament.
Brunt, at least, will not be cowed. This is a cricketer who has a highly productive, career-long relationship with adversity, who has made a life out of refusing to stop, and who seems at all times entirely lost in this thing. Her story bears repeating. As a kid she spent evenings throwing a tennis ball at the mismatched brick in the wall of the family home, refusing to come in for dinner until she had hit it. At school she was bullied for being “a bit of an oddball”, and for being overweight. She trained with England’s juniors but hated it (“they were not very nice people”). She got into drinking. She gave up cricket. One day she decided she didn’t want that. She went running with her dad, a little further each day, and eventually dropped four stone. Barnsley CC became a home. When she came back to the England setup aged 19 some of her former training mates didn’t recognise her as the same person.
From there it is easy to take for granted quite how relentlessly good Brunt has been, and for how long. She was England Vodafone cricketer of the year in 2006 alongside Andrew Flintoff. Three career-menacing back injuries have followed, the last at the 2018 World T20, which she left in a wheelchair. But she’s still out there: a double World Cup winner, with 316 England wickets at 22, still offering control, contributing with the bat now, and still applying that unwavering will, utterly engaged in every moment of every game.
There is more of course. Brunt came out as gay to her parents aged 21. It fractured her relationship with her mother. But her family is still close and her dad sounds amazing. And if some of this makes her seem like a sad story, or a heavy presence, then she is clearly not those things. Brunt is exuberant, funny, and relentlessly energetic in training. She has a house, known as “Alan”, that has been a kind of salon for England women’s cricket down the years, and which is now shared with her fiance and England teammate, Nat Sciver, two halves (with all due apologies: but it’s true) of an outstandingly high-grade English sporting power couple.
What now? Brunt is 36, but still out there bouncing in with the same cartoon-squirrel sense of optimism. From here England have, at best, three World Cup games to play. The chances of beating Australia are slim, the chance of getting a shot decent enough.
A fully operational Brunt will guarantee at the very least a sense of will, of something grand and unyielding, perhaps even the chance of a rare late bloom. British sport is full of gonged-up head prefect types, celebrity filler described, often laughably, as inspiration. Brunt is the real thing, a true original, and an authentically inspiring cricketer.
