The popularity of the women’s Hundred has taken everyone by surprise and the record-breaking crowds look like seriously challenging those of women’s football
A few years ago I wrote a piece on “double-header” matches – the phenomenon whereby a women’s match is played directly before a men’s match in an effort to increase crowd sizes for the women. The headline will give you an idea of my view: “Double headers are the future – but they stink”.
When I found out, therefore, that the inaugural edition of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s new competition, the Hundred, would be played almost entirely as double headers, my heart sank. I envisaged the women’s matches relegated to “warm-up” status; press boxes filled with retrograde journalists who only bothered to turn up to cover the men; female players being hurried along by the umpires to make way for the day’s “main event”; crowds who arrived to watch the men. In the 10 years I have been covering women’s cricket, these have all been regular occurrences at double headers in England and around the world.
