Former English women’s cricketer Isa Guha is feeling great for the increasing importance of the female voice in the cricket broadcasting world.

Doing television commentary for a long time even in men’s cricket, Guha now feels comfortable and confident to work with many popular experienced male commentators.

Talking about the importance of female voice in cricket broadcasting, Guha told according to Sportstar, “Broadcasters are recognizing that there is a wider audience out there that want to hear a female voice. It’s great that there are so many opportunities for women at the moment. I’ve been educated in broadcast through working around the world and now I feel really confident that I can do the job alongside men and comfortable that I do offer a different perspective. OK, I haven’t played the men’s game. But I’ve played women’s cricket and there are some similarities there.

“Part of my role is to try and get the best out of the guests that I have – try and understand what was going through their mind when they were playing and so forth.”

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Guha is also working in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for few years. She believes that the women’s IPL is now made sense but it could be started with some different patterns from the men’s IPL at the initial stages.

Guha voted for women’s IPL and said, “It just makes sense. All the production is in place already. It would make sense to play a women’s game ahead of a men’s game. You think about the number of games that start at 8 p.m. when there aren’t any 4 p.m. games [that day] – you could quite easily do that.

“The question is: Is there enough depth? Could you start with six teams initially? Maybe have five overseas players instead of four, just to start with? As the competition strengthens, you can expand that and have fewer overseas players.”

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Since the 2017 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in England, which had achieved a huge success, the popularity of women’s cricket is growing rapidly.

Talking about the new level of women’s cricket, “Batters have gone to another level in terms of their power-hitting and striking ability. Fielding has constantly improved and there are more skills with the ball as well. The World Cup also showed that there is a greater depth to teams. It’s certainly not about the big four anymore. The professionalism that’s come into the game has been outstanding.”

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Guha has also lauded England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for their positive upward promotions prior to the 2017 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, which led the tournament into the massive success.

Guha spoke on that, “You need to break the cycle sometime. There was always the chicken and egg scenario of: ‘People aren’t going to turn up if you don’t market the game. But people aren’t going to market the game if there’s no interest.’ The ECB broke that cycle by just marketing the game.

“We were getting a lot of people at venues like Chelmsford and Hove and Taunton and so that had a knock-on effect on broadcasters wanting to showcase more of the games. But there has also been a backing from the government to try and promote as much women’s sport as possible. And the likes of the BBC and Sky Sports have been very supportive of the women’s game. That’s what I am also now seeing around the world.”