Day Jobs:

The Dutch men's team won many new friends with their gutsy performance against England's men team. Skipper Jeroen Smits spoke of not minding taking days of work to play in the tournament. The best of the Dutch play or will play in English county cricket. The same is true of the Irish and Scottish. There are no central contracts for them. They don't complain, but when Aimee Watkins and Charlotte Edwards lead their teams out at Lords this morning, the stark reality of life in women's cricket compared to the men's game should hit home.

Even those at the pinnacle of success have to juggle their cricket commitments with work or studies. “Most of our girls are either full time workers or students,” says New Zealand's recently appointed Vice-captain, Amy Satterthwaite. “They’re having to juggle that with their cricket as well which makes it extremely difficult. I think the only thing they can do is keep helping us and supporting us financially to enable us to keep playing for longer.” So what more could be done to help? “Financially and with the services that they give us,” she says. “Trainers and that sort of thing just to keep helping us along the way to keep playing.”

Building for the Future:

Women's cricket is growing. It had wider exposure in this tournament than ever before. “Definitely, especially here in England,” says New Zeal;and's Sara McGlashan. “With the semi-finals being shown live and also being seen on the news it definitely helps, because then it’s obviously out in the public domain with the young girls at school and things like that seeing the England girls and really wanting to emulate what they are doing.”

She believes that the cricket authorities in New Zealand and the International Cricket Council (ICC) are supporting women's cricket. “It’s definitely getting better. Obviously we’re playing more games throughout the year and I guess with the help of televised games – we had a couple of games televised in the World Cup in March and obviously the semi-final and final here in England, so it’s definitely on the up.”

Satterthwaite agrees with her team-mate. “I think the coverage of women’s cricket over the last twelve months has increased a lot,” she says. “It’s great to see and certainly the awareness of the game and women’s cricket at home and throughout the world is increasing a lot, so working hard to increase it they’ve got to keep doing what they’re doing. It’s great.”

Women's cricket is developing a higher profile as a result of the exposure it received in tournaments like this. “I think that the publicity of the women’s game is a huge thing in terms of getting players numbers created at a younger age and more players and also once players reach international level just being able to support players so that they can prolong their careers based on their ability rather than their financial situation,” says McGlashan, but are the authorities doing enough?

Satterthwaite thinks that they are. “I think keep doing what they’ve been doing in this tournament,” she says. “Playing with the men gives a huge amount of publicity and it increases the awareness of the game, make people realise that it’s a fantastic game to watch as well as men. I mean [at the semi-final at the Oval] the women scored more runs than the men on the same field, so it just shows that we’re not far behind them.”

And McGlashan thinks that it is getting better as well. “It’s definitely improved over the last year or two,” says McGlashan. “Now that our World Cups are under ICC players, we are getting looked after quite well and that’s just as the amount of games we play increase each year hopefully that support can continue.”

Crowds:

“Taunton was a really good crowd,” said McGlashan. “I think one of the England games was around 3000 and when we played in Trent Bridge, maybe about 8000 people here so that’s definitely huge for the women’s game.” Some have expressed disappointment that larger crowds did not come, but McGlashan doesn't share those sentiments. “Obviously 8000 is definitely pretty big for the women’s game,” she says, “so the men playing afterwards it possibly would not have been anywhere near that. Playing the double-headers definitely does help with the crowds for the women’s game.”