GarlicJam wrote:I think that women's cricket in India is a giant beginning to wake. They are going to be the force to counter in a decade or so
I think 10 years ago you could have given me a £1 million pounds and I could have turned whatever nation you cared to give me from the top 20 ranked ladies teams into world champions in less than 12 months. You'd only have needed to pay them enough to quit their day jobs, get somewhere to practice, get them working on fitness everyday, and get them a good quality coaching. That alone I would guess would have beaten hands down the best "naturally gifted" side of amateurs in a very short space of time.
Does that sort of environment exist in the ladies game now? To a certain extent, yes it does. Its only natural when a sport is yet to be fully optimized, that any team that is able to do something someone else cant easily, can gain a quick advantage. Its a plain reality that women's cricket does not operate yet to the full standard of full professionalization, and while Australia are the closest to achieve this as yet, you could still say 27500AUD a year for the lowest earners might put off some ladies from other careers, or you might still operate with facilities that arent to the highest level. So assuming you have enough resources, yes, in theory you could go a couple of levels higher up and firebomb the Aussie team back down to second best.
But is that level of investment realistic? The Aussies are miles out in front and only seem to want to push further out of sight. Can someone like India compete? Obviously in India with lower wages and costs, you dont need to match investments in actual terms, so India would be able to get more bang with their buck should they choose to invest more into the ladies game. Just on a figure from google, the average wage currently is 32,200INR or 400USD a month, so paying 5,000USD a year might be enough for people to choose cricket as a profession, and for a relatively small investment you can build a stock of full time players. But then pushing this to a new level and rewarding players with increase quality, pushes the required investment into higher and higher territories; and lets be frank, we are not at a stage yet where the ladies game outside of major final matches can justify paying what the Aussies are, to challenge that you have to strip money from your mens revenue and contribute it to the ladies teams, or make a loss.
It feels like Australia have been the first to commit fully, and have done so to a level that is very difficult for a lot of boards. New Zealand's cricket board for instance has committed to increase women's wages, but they have made losses in recent years, they cant continue to sustain disproportionate cost ratios to income on the ladies game (in fact their losses mirror about their investment, so the cash they have pledged to their women was something they didnt have to offer). Even the ECB might find itself in total dire straits financially if the 100 flops, and may not be able to afford the pledges they have made. And they are a relatively rich cricket board, others simply cant.
I'd be surprised if anyone can wrestle Australia's grip at the top of the womens game, in fact since the last financial plan came into play very recently, the gap if anything has increased by an absolute country mile. And its too early too see the effects of that.
I personally can see this only being the start of an Aussie whitewash of the women's game, and one that may take a generation or two to break down.