all over cricket podcast by Jay Dansinghani

At the time of recording, it had been 623 days since Sri Lanka's Women's Team had played international cricket. Estelle Vasudevan joins Jay to discuss the SLC's apathy toward women's cricket since the highs of the 2013 World Cup campaign where they defeated England and thrashed India. 

As per the latest ICC census, more than 50,000 Malaysians played some form of cricket organized by the Malaysian Cricket Association in 2019. For this episode, I'm joined by Malaysian Women's skipper Winifred Duraisingam and Men's team batter Virandeep Singh. 

Welcome to Season 2 of the All Over Cricket Podcast

Matchday attendance in the women’s competition of The Hundred has often approached or exceeded 10,000. Make no mistake: the competition has been a game-changer for women’s cricket in England, coming on the back of 41 domestic retainer contracts being handed out last year.

Fabian Cowdrey was born into cricketing royalty. On his Kent debut, before he’d faced a single ball, Fabian received a standing ovation from a packed house at Canterbury. Many of those fans were seated in a stand named after his grandfather Colin. Like his grandfather and his father Chris Cowdrey, Fabian wanted to captain England.

For episode 8, we’re joined by Warwickshire, Central Sparks, and Birmingham Phoenix fast bowler Issy Wong. 19-year-old Wong has already been clocked at over 70 miles an hour, and she has expressed her desire to become the world’s fastest female bowler. But there’s so much more to Issy’s story than just being that girl who wants to hit 80 clicks.

From biosecure bubbles bursting to the SLC board and players being locked in a standoff over contracts, the last few weeks have, once again, been rather chaotic for Sri Lankan cricket.

Ireland’s men only managed to pick up 10 points out of a possible 60 in the Super League series against Afghanistan and The Netherlands. The latter was a particularly disappointing result given how the Dutch were missing their three best middle order batters.

There’s been no shortage of drama during India’s tour of England. Sneh Rana’s heroics in a rare women’s test match have been followed by two ODIs that could have gone either way. While India’s players have gained valuable game time, this has been a huge summer for the women’s game in England, not least due to the 41 full-time domestic contracts awarded to players outside the core of England’s national set up.

In January 2020, Cricket Brasil announced it was awarding 14 central contracts for its women’s national team. It was the first instance of a cricket board awarding full-time contracts to its female athletes ahead of its men's team.

For this episode, we are joined by Karunya Keshav, co-author of The Fire Burns Blue: A History of Women's Cricket in India. Few journalists have covered women's cricket in India as thoroughly as Karunya has, so she's the best person to discuss things like:

For many years, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and its men’s players were at odds with each other. The WICB labelled the likes of Pollard, Dwayne Bravo, and Chris Gayle as mercenaries, and blackballed them from wearing the maroon. Unsurprisingly, the West Indies’ on-field fortunes suffered. They only just scraped through to the Men’s 2019 World Cup, where they could only win two out of nine games. 

Nepal is the most widely supported cricketing nation among Associate members. Whether it’s a parade at Tribhuvan International Airport to welcome back the national team or the TU ground being packed to the rafters, iconic images of Nepal's passionate fan base have come to represent the hope that cricket will one day expand outside of its traditional strongholds.