Stuart Cain: Legacy of Commonwealth Games is as important as tournament itself

JAMES COYNE reports that the women’s T20 tournament is set to be played at the same time as The Hundred

Just when you who thought English cricket seasons were crowded enough, 2022 will see another tournament thrown into high summer with the entry of a women’s tournament into the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

There will be eight nations competing over eight days of T20 cricket from the opening day of Birmingham 2022 on Friday July 29 to the final on Sunday August 7.

It is the first time since Kuala Lumpur 1998 that cricket has been included in a Commonwealth Games. (On that occasion a men’s 50-over tournament was won by South Africa with a rare victory over Steve Waugh’s Australia in the final.)

Edgbaston will host all the matches after New Road, Worcester and Grace Road, Leicester fell out of the running, and will seek to make maximum use of the hybrid pitches installed on the square at Edgbaston.

Warwickshire chief executive Stuart Cain will sit on a working group with ECB managing director of women’s cricket Clare Connor and Matt Eagles of Birmingham 2022 to oversee delivery of the women’s T20 event.

Cain told The Cricketer the organisers would consider staging two matches a day, which is nothing new for Edgbaston with Vitality Blast finals day accommodating three back-to-back games every year. Reserve days look set to be built into the schedule – music to England’s ears after they were booted out of the last Women’s T20 World Cup after a rained-off semi-final in Sydney.

In an interview with The Cricketer at the start of this year, Connor said the tournament dates would not clash with the Women’s Hundred and that England “would very much want to field our strongest side”. It remains to be seen how the ECB will juggle Hundred matches in the 2022 schedule, as back-to-back men’s and women’s games in the school holidays were a major factor behind devising the new 100-ball tournament.

^{Edgbaston will host every game at the 2022 Commonwealth Games}

Hybrid pitches – a combination of natural grass twisted with 5 per cent soft polyethylene yarn – have been installed at several county grounds. The Commonwealth Games Federation has even helped fund the installation of a third hybrid wicket at Edgbaston over this winter.

Cain said: “The hybrid pitches went down really well with players, as they produce a bit more pace, carry and bounce. We haven’t road-tested them with a red-ball yet and we don’t know how they’d go over four days, as the turn isn’t quite the same, but they seem well-suited to T20.”

Birmingham 2022’s planned £500m Athletes’ Village in Perry Barr, intended to house 6,500 athletes and staff, was a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic, as construction fell behind schedule.

Instead athletes will stay in existing student accommodation across the city, with the eight cricket teams and staff set to be allocated to the University of Birmingham just down the road in Edgbaston, which will be empty during the holidays.

The ECB and ICC’s last-minute bid for a cricket competition to join Birmingham 2022 was attractive to the CGF for the bumper TV audiences on the subcontinent.

Already it has been confirmed that Sunset+Vine, who have a fine track record in cricket as producers of England highlights for Channel 4 and Channel 5, will be host producers of Games TV coverage seen by a 1.5bn global audience. BBC have won the broadcast rights to the Games, giving women’s cricket a rare berth on terrestrial television.

“The legacy of this Games is as important as the actual tournament itself,” says Cain. “It’s our chance to really make an impact in the local communities around Birmingham. Women in sport is a hot topic now, and this is an ideal opportunity. We’ve seen what the World Cup did last year.”

^{Cricket was announced as a participant sport at the Games in August 2019}

Covid-19 permitting, Warwickshire hope to use Edgbaston’s impressive conference and banqueting facilities to host ancillary events around the Games. Cain has already suggested a seminar on how to increase the number of female cricket coaches; women make up just 6 per cent of qualified coaches in England and Wales, something the ECB are desperate to change.

As for the tournament itself, Connor had told The Cricketer that six leading ICC Full Member sides would be “siphoned off”, with slots seven and eight probably decided by a qualifying tournament.

There are complications for some Full Members, though. India have not sent teams to Asian Games when cricket has been on the roster, and the BCCI’s stance on Birmingham 2022 is unclear.

West Indies compete in Olympic and Commonwealth Games as independent countries, and even Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana could face a tough task qualifying against the leading Associate nations in the Commonwealth.

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The Republic of Ireland is not a Commonwealth nation, so a Northern Ireland team (which did compete in the 1998 Games) would be weaker on their own. Scotland and Papua New Guinea would be among the strongest contenders for the last couple of spots if some Full Members were indisposed.

It looks like being a busy 2022 for the leading women’s international players. The next 50-over World Cup, scheduled originally for New Zealand in early 2021, has been moved back 12 months due to Covid-19. There is a Women’s T20 World Cup scheduled for South Africa later in 2022.

Men’s and women’s cricket tournaments are also returning to the 2022 Asian Games, to be staged that September in Hangzhou, China. Though the city has no cricket facilities at present, international-standard cricket grounds appeared with impressive haste for the 2010 Games in Guangzhou, China and 2014 in Incheon, South Korea.

This article originally appeared in the November 2020 issue of The Cricketer magazine. Subscribe here