Photo taken from @englandcricket on Instagram
On Sunday (5th July), the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup finished at Lord’s Cricket Club with Australia winning their 7th title. They faced England who were dominant throughout their home tournament but this appearance in the final was more than just a second place, it changed how Women’s Cricket was perceived in the UK.
This tournament also secured four countries’ places in the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA – South Africa, India, Australia and Great Britain (taking the place of England). Netherlands also qualified for the first time in this tournament but defending champions New Zealand were eliminated in the Group Stage, with the latter being a shock.
Australia’s Beth Mooney was revealed as Player of the series with England’s Danni Wyatt-Hodge having the most runs throughout the tournament (302 runs) and Shree Charani from India got the most wickets throughout (14).
There were seven venues throughout the tournament including the semi-finals at The Oval and the final at Lord’s. The other venues included Edgbaston (Birmingham), County Ground (Bristol), Headingley (Leeds), Old Trafford Cricket Ground (Manchester) and Rose Bowl (Southampton).
Match 28 between New Zealand and England saw the latter win by 9 wickets with over 21,000 in attendance for the game. Match 29 and 30 was a double header with Bangladesh facing South Africa and India playing against Australia, with 27,163 in attendance across both matches seeing South Africa win by 4 wickets and Australia winning by 6 wickets.
Semi Final 1 and 2 was another big one for attendance statistics, improving the competition as a whole. Despite it being during a weekday where many people are at work or school, just over 10,000 watched Australia win by 8 wickets against West Indies in just 13 overs. Meanwhile for England vs South Africa, being held on a Thursday night helped attendances as 21,128 fans were in attendance, watching some of the best people in international cricket battle it out for a place in the final. 28,887 fans were in attendance during the final which was the highest attended women’s match held at lord’s and was packed out right until the final bat of the ball.
In 2026, the WPL season (held in India) featured many of the same players who played throughout the tournament and drew 37.1 million viewers for the Eliminator and Final on television. The tournament saw a number of new fans taste cricket for the first time with 42% of women saying this will be the first time watching the tournament and a quarter of men saying this will be the first time they would be watching any form of women’s cricket (YouGov, 2026).
England Women’s Cricket has definitely benefited from the recent successes of both the Lionesses and Red Roses with around 27% saying that this is one of the reasons as to why they planned on watching the tournament.
The opening weekend of the T20 World Cup was the most watched ever of any ICC T20 Women’s Tournament (since being shown on Sky Sports and since 2016) on Sky Sports with 3.3 million viewer hours over a few days of cricket. The opener between England and Sri Lanka drew the highest average on record (393k) for the T20 tournament on Sky Sports with a peak audience of 510k watching England’s first win of the tournament. The opening game was also streamed on Youtube where nearly 75,000 people watched and 90,000 people were on the live blog on Sky Sports.
The tournament was shown multiple times on the Sky Sports app and free-to-air to make it more accessible for people getting into the sport. With the games only lasting around two and a half hours, there wasn’t a long lasting commitment to people watching, compared to a one day international.
Women’s Cricket doesn’t stop there for the summer. The first ever test match at Lord’s sees England face India on Friday (10th July) at 11am BST. The Hundred starts on 21st July lasting for an entire month and if you liked some of the players from the tournament, you will more than likely spot them.
Leave a Reply