Tammy Beaumont, the trendy England opener, has slammed comparisons between girls’s and males’s cricket, calling them “the largest factor that typically holds it again”. The comparability between males’s and girls’s cricket has been happening for many years, and there have been many who’ve criticised cricket boards for not taking steps towards for the event of ladies’s recreation.
Beaumont made her debut in 2009 and though it took her time to kind herself as a serious element of the staff, she ultimately established herself as one of many biggest openers on the earth. Her progress within the recreation coincided with England’s transfer of accelerating the funding for the ladies’s recreation in 2014 when Beaumont grew to become one of many 18 gamers to get an annual contract.
Since then, girls cricketers’ graph has solely moved upwards as 41 gamers had been offered an expert contract in 2020. Whereas girls’s cricket has come a great distance since Beaumont’s debut, she believes there may be a lot nonetheless left.
Notably, the Girls’s Sports activities Belief reported earlier this month {that a} report 15.1 million had been engaged in girls’s sports activities within the first quarter of the yr, of which the Girls’s World Cup viewership accounted for 13%. Regardless of solely lasting a month and broadcasting in a single day owing to the occasion being held in New Zealand, it was the fourth most seen girls’s competitors within the UK.
“The sport can completely go larger. The largest factor that typically holds it again is the comparability to the lads’s recreation – folks saying ‘girls don’t bowl 90mph, don’t hit sixes, don’t hit the ball as exhausting’. It will possibly kill the sport,” she stated in an interview with Sky Sports activities
“You’ll want to see it for what it’s, see that it’s completely different, choose it for what it’s. It ought to nonetheless be critiqued when it falls quick as we’d like that if we need to enhance. But it surely doesn’t assist if folks say, ‘she wouldn’t do very nicely in opposition to Jofra Archer, would she?’ These kinds of issues actually aren’t useful,” she added.
Nice to see pay rises within the Hundred however that’s just for a small a part of the yr: Tammy Beaumont
Stressing on the necessity for England to carry the ladies’s recreation up, Beaumont gave the instance of Australia. “One of many causes Australia are so good is that they’ve 90-plus full-time skilled cricketers that genuinely wouldn’t have to do anything to become profitable apart from play cricket 12 months a yr,” she stated.
“Over right here, there are just below 20 England gamers that may try this however groups in our home regional construction have solely received about six gamers every getting paid full-time. It’s clearly nice to see the pay rises in The Hundred however that’s just for a small a part of the yr.
“The remainder of the time, quite a lot of these gamers are having to work, coach or no matter to get by. It has to get to the purpose the place your entire squad is skilled and might practice full-time. That may enhance the usual and competitors for locations,” she added.
