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Originally Posted by Oliver As an umpire Andy, how does the pace of women's bowling compare with the men? |
Hmm. Good question. There's quite a lot of variation in the level I umpire because its the women's equivalent of club cricket. Generally, teams at this level have only 4-5 good players and the others are there for fun. A typical batting scorecard could look: 30,20,20,10,5,0,0,0,0,0,0 and in my experience whoever gets out the first 3/4 batsmen should win the game.
In terms of bowling, the level is probably higher than the batting. The team I umpire for have a fantastic left-arm seamer who would easily hold her own in men's club cricket (though she did used to play for Essex youth). They also have a couple of right armers who get a lot of swing. However, the pace of these three is probably no more than medium. I have seen the right armers play men's club cricket and take wickets, so they are no chumps. When it comes to spin bowling, the women's bowlers I have seen tend to get some decent to even prodigious spin, but the pace is very, very slow so people will either hit the bowling all over the park or will be deceived by the lack of pace!
From what I understand about the Hampshire ladies team, the level is a lot higher than this. However, the organisation is quite susceptible to nepotism in that the main organiser plays for Portsmouth ladies, and the make up of Hampshire is basically the Portsmouth team and not many other local teams get a look in. I hasten to add that this is what I have heard, and may not be factual.
Certainly though, the decent women cricketers would be able to hold their own in men's club cricket and thus I think that the best women cricketers should be able to compete with the lesser mens teams. Also, I would say that the county teams would be better than Namibia, Bangladesh etc. and thus seeing a match between the best of the women and a county side would probably give you a better indication of how the women would compete.
The problem with this is the playing fields are not level. You could not get women to bowl with a mens ball just as you could not get a man to bowl with a womens ball as your bowling would go all over the place (try it yourself). Whenever I've bowled with a womens ball I end up seriously overpitching (beamers, full tosses etc.) just because it is a little lighter; thus unless you had two different teams using different weight balls (not a level playing field), the game just could not go ahead.
Oh yes, and I haven't seen a female cricketer wearing a cricket skirt in at least 5 years. Trousers are definately de rigeur these days!
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