Former Australian women’s World Cup-winning captain Belinda Clark claims that the T20 cricket has been a game changer for cricket and the women’s cricket has benefited hugely.
Making her international cricket debut in 1991, Clark played 15 Tests, 118 ODIs and only T20I till 2005, where she scored 5,767 runs (919 Test runs, 4,844 ODI runs and 4 T20I runs). Under her captaincy, the Australian women’s cricket team won two World Cups in 1997 and 2005 respectively and also reached another final in 2000.
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Prior to the 2018 ICC Women’s World T20 that is going to be played in West Indies from 9 to 24 November 2018, Clark credited the T20 cricket for the growth of women’s cricket.
She recently wrote for icc-cricket.com, “T20 cricket has been a game changer for cricket and the women’s game has benefited enormously from this format. The growth in the game has been phenomenal, at both ends of the spectrum. It is happening at the international level with more teams challenging each other, and the impact has also been felt at community and school levels, where girls are turning up in droves to play the game.”
As a member of ICC’s Cricket Committee, Clark further added that the broadcasting facilities have put a remarkable impact on the women’s cricket as every woman cricketer is now noticeable.
She wrote, “The volume of cricket being broadcast has had a remarkable impact on the game and the perceptions of it. Every time women are seen playing on TV, a number of people watch it for the first time, and they are amazed by the quality of the players.”
Clarke has a wider view for future cricket as she believes that more non-traditional cricket teams will join in the bigger stages to put serious challenges the big historical cricket teams.
The ICC Hall of Famer Belinda Clark wrote, “The game is moving forward very quickly and I think in 10 years, the teams in these events would have expanded, some non-traditional cricket countries would be playing in these events and challenging the big guns. The game would have continued to spread across the globe and will be laying down a strong platform for girls to participate in any country.”
