Playing a waiting game

The girls play exclusively white-ball cricket at domestic level, but it’s great to see that the longer format will be on show in the women‘s game when England and Australia kick off the Ashes with a Test at Trent Bridge later this month. It will be the first-ever women’s Test scheduled to run over five days.

But I do feel for the players as well, because all the cricket they play is in the shorter formats, and then suddenly they’re asked to perform with the red-ball in a one-off five-day contest.

It’s not easy to adapt to the physical demands of a multi-day match when you’re not used to what it requires. For the seamers, bowling three six-over spells in a day is something that their bodies are not used to. They don’t see much of the red ball either.

I have done a few red-ball sessions with some of the Stars players, just to get a bit of a feel for it, and they really enjoy that, but it would be some three-day matches in women’s domestic cricket.

You might need bigger squads, but that shouldn’t be a problem with more and more professional players. And there appears to be enough room in the calendar to fit in some red-ball cricket.