Annabel Sutherland: “The Hundred is a great place to express yourself”

She is back in England for a different kind of Hundred this summer, playing for the Northern Superchargers in her third season in the competition.

“It’s good to be back,” she said, speaking as part of KP Snacks ‘Everyone In’ campaign, celebrating the installation of 100 grassroots community cricket pitches.

“It’s a pretty fun tournament. It moves quickly and it’s a little bit different but at the end of the day, it’s still cricket.”

Sutherland has grown up seeing women’s franchise cricket develop exponentially. She debuted for the Melbourne Renegades in the Women’s Big Bash League as a 15-year-old, and was at the time the youngest ever player.

“The standard of domestic cricket in Australia is still a little bit above The Hundred, but it’s definitely improving year on year. It’s fun to be part of that along with the Women’s Premier League in India which again is season to season seeing the Indian talents get better.

“It’s exciting for the game to see women able to decide what, when and how they want to play cricket. Girls are able to pick and choose.”

As the number one ranked T20 bowler in the world, it is ironic that some of Sutherland’s most famous moments have come in Test cricket. With the format still underplayed in the women’s game, the opportunities are not frequent but Sutherland has taken them. In this year’s Women’s Ashes in Australia, she became the first woman to ever score a Test century at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

“It was pretty special, as a Victorian,” she says. “Even to get the opportunity to play a Test match at the MCG was wild. I spent a lot of time there growing up watching AFL and cricket so it was surreal firstly to play there and then to have the success we did across four days.

“The Test fits really nicely in the multi-format series in my opinion, as a one-off match. But you can see in the discussions around Test cricket in the men’s game and where franchise cricket is heading, that that’s where the money is and eyeballs are on the game.

“Women’s cricket has a unique opportunity to bring new fans into the game, particularly young girls and have that next generation coming through. It’s important to keep that in perspective when having discussions about Test cricket.

“But as a cricket loving person, anytime I get to play a Test it’s very special. I would like to play more of them.”

The Women’s Ashes was a particularly chastening experience for England who lost every match in the series to be defeated 16-0. The result led to the sacking of coach Jon Lewis whilst captain Heather Knight also stepped down. As part of a group that are arguably one of the most dominant sports teams in history, Sutherland insists Australia were predominantly thinking about themselves rather than their opponents’ meltdown.

“We’re really tough on ourselves and set pretty high standards. Looking back across the whole series, it was nice to get that result on the board. We reviewed every game and were still talking about things we could have done better and ways we could improve.

“It’s interesting to look back now. There was obviously a bit of fuss made towards the end of it because of the result but we didn’t take too much notice of that. We were focused on what we were doing and how we were going to play cricket.”

Sustaining success is one of the hardest elements of being a sports team but Australia have won three of the last four T20 World Cups, three of the last five ODI World Cups and have held the Women’s Ashes since 2015.

“Our biggest strength is probably that every single person who comes into the squad has this drive to get better and improve. We’re always talking about how we can get better, where the gaps are and how we can bridge those gaps.

“I love to look at how I can improve my game and it’s cool to know everyone across the board is doing that too. Tournaments like The Hundred are a great chance to be able to express the things you have been working on. Then we can bring that back when we get together the next time, which will be for the World Cup.”

The World Cup is taking place in India and Sri Lanka from the end of September but Sutherland believes more work needs to be done internationally to raise the standard of the competition.

“Tournaments like the World Cup can expose teams that maybe don’t have the same resources. We need to keep putting resources into improving facilities and players because it’s a feedback loop. The more you put in, the more you get out of players.

“You’ve seen with England, India and Australia how putting good resources into domestic competition in particular can reap the rewards at the international level.”

Photo by Nathan Stirk – ECB via Getty Images