Having a Blast should be good news for women’s game

Surrey, Bears (Warwickshire) and The Blaze (Nottinghamshire) will get the chance to shine at this showcase ground – yet Surrey’s women have been denied the chance to play a single 50-over game at The Oval this season.

Home advantage? Not so much. Instead, the powers-that-be farmed their new women’s team out to a ground – Beckenham – owned by Kent. It seems a far cry from what the England and Wales Cricket Board envisaged when it decided 18 months ago to restructure the women’s domestic game, replacing the regional structure – which was only five years old – with a move back to women’s county cricket.

In a Dragon’s Den-style pitching process, Surrey beat stiff competition (including from Kent) to win the right to host one of the eight new fully professional “Tier One” women’s sides.

Regional cricket was a success but its problems were apparent a year ago when fewer than 1,000 fans turned up to Derby for the Charlotte Edwards Cup finals and had to get their own pizza to be delivered to the ground.

That should not be an issue this time: Surrey are going all out to draw in punters by marketing the day in conjunction with bottomless brunch on their Roof Terrace. Despite an unfortunate direct clash with England in the Euros final, the ECB hopes for a crowd in excess of 5,000.

The ECB’s Beth Barrett-Wild, the driving force behind the restructure, is excited. “Just in Tier One, we’ve had over 75,000 people come to watch women’s matches in the Blast this year, which is incredible levels of visibility,” she says. “The counties have been brilliant, they’ve just grabbed hold of it and run with it. It’s been a real positive shift and step forward for women’s cricket.” She adds that, despite the Beckenham issue, Tier One counties are currently more than 95% compliant with the ECB’s new County Partnership Agreement, which requires equal treatment of their women’s and men’s teams.

“Surrey made a strategic decision at th e start of the year, given the volume of cricket The Oval has, that they could give the women’s team a more permanent experience and base by playing the majority of those fixtures at Beckenham,” she says.

To be fair, Surrey have committed resources to the women’s team in other ways – including financing three bonus contracts in addition to the 15 funded by the ECB. It goes some way to explaining their dominant performances in the Blast: they finished the group stage 10 points clear, to go straight into Sunday’s final, and are favourites to win.

That gives Australian Grace Harris, who has scored 275 runs for Surrey in the competition, bragging rights over older sister Laura, who will play for Bears in the semi-final against Blaze.

They may yet face each other in the final. “We have discussed that,” Grace says. “And I said, ‘Good luck following up from the first game’, because she’s an old woman now, so those knees don’t go so well.”

The presence of the sisters – and compatriots Ellyse Perry (Hampshire) and Alana King (Lancashire) – is a promising sign of the esteem in which the new county structure is held.

“To come over and play in English conditions against a fair few England players and with England players is a good challenge,” Grace says. “I’m taking my international career one game at a time, but I’m looking to the future and thinking how I can get the best out of myself.”

In keeping with England coach Charlotte Edwards’ focus on the importance of county cricket, the majority of England players (with the prominent exception of captain Nat Sciver-Brunt) are being released to play on Sunday, after their series against India wrapped up on Tuesday.

But the Blast has also been a competition of the future: 18-year-old Bears opener Davina Perrin, who has already played in two Under-19 World Cups, is the second-highest run-scorer, while Bears’ left-arm wrist-spinner Millie Taylor is – in her first season of professional cricket – among the leading wicket-takers.

Perhaps the one disappointment is that there will be only one semi-­final, instead of two. “A three-match Finals Day is a very long day,” Barrett-Wild says. “In consultation with the teams, when we were developing the schedule, there was a feeling having the two matches is a more compelling fan opportunity.” The success of the men’s Blast Finals Day at Edgbaston, in which spectators will cram into the Hollies Stand late into the evening next month, is something of a counter-argument.

On the other hand, Surrey have confirmed that there will be a mascots race: now that really is true equality.

Photograph by Tom Dulat/Getty Images