Identifying the best batsman in the world is a parlous exercise. Once upon a time you may have said Tendulkar, but I’d think Ponting. How about Kallis? Then what about Lara? Does Kohli top the pops now? Not if you’ve got Root. Or maybe Williamson. And that Smith bloke goes alright.
It’s not so hard in the women’s game. The finest on the planet is Australia’s captain Meg Lanning. Nobody disputes her dominance. Except maybe herself. “I don’t see myself as the best player in the world,” she tells Guardian Australia ahead of Australia’s opening match of the summer in Canberra on Friday. “I don’t have the complete game in any way; that’s how I keep my motivation up.”
Despite the humble sentiment, at 24 years old Lanning’s primacy can be readily demonstrated through the force of her blistering drives or the precision of her cut shots. But the empirical case trumps all that, even. To pick the obvious stat from the format her Southern Stars are playing five fixtures against the touring South Africans, Lanning has eight one-day international centuries in just 49 innings. That’s one behind the most on record, by recently retired England great Charlotte Edwards, but coming in just over a quarter of the matches.
Only Hashim Amla sports a better innings-to-hundred strike rate for any limited overs player. Tallying scores 50 and above, Lanning gets to raise her bat one in every three times to the crease – marginally superior to Sachin Tendulkar. In the shortest form the numerical evidence is less pronounced, but she still boasts the highest score made in a T20 women’s international (126), and has been gonged as the ICC’s player of the year in both white ball categories. Wisden assessed likewise in 2015, with Lanning their leading woman in world cricket. So, with the greatest respect to our subject’s opinion, the jury is otherwise in.
For a snapshot of Lanning so far this summer in October, for Victoria she smacked 190 against Tasmania – the highest score ever in the national competition. Sure enough, it was her own record that was bettered. A fortnight later she walloped a new club cricket best in Victoria, an unbeaten 241. In summary, she enters this bilateral series in especially red hot form.
But there’s a healthy understanding with Lanning that despite her own mastery the exceptional growth in women’s cricket is a challenge to her side’s own authority. Where success was once the exclusive domain of the Australia, England and occasionally New Zealand, the West Indies knocked off Lanning’s charges in the World T20 Final in March, shocking the thrice-consecutive champs.
With a series of players battle hardened on the international stage South Africa shouldn’t be far from the mark while in the country, and certainly not overwhelmed. However, losing the fastest bowler in women’s cricket, Shabnil Ismail, due to a disciplinary ruling – and ‘keeper Trisha Chetty for the same indiscretions – the tourists aren’t at full strength.
What they have lost in personnel they will need to recover through incentive. With the ICC’s new world rankings scheme securing the top four teams an automatic berth to next year’s ODI World Cup in England, if the sixth-ranked tourists can thrash the hosts they’re likely straight in. Lanning’s assessment ahead of the series – moving from Canberra to Sydney to Coffs Harbour – is that their opponents are underrated by their spot on the table. “We’ve seen a number of their them out here last year in the WBBL. They’ve got some really dangerous players.”
For her own team’s part, Lanning agrees this doubles as the beginning of their journey to England. Already occupying poll position in World Cup seedings, they have come off a comprehensive away thrashing of Sri Lanka during the winter. But going back-to-back in that tournament will require at some stage overcoming a remodelled England outfit and a New Zealand squad full of talented veterans desperate for a trophy. Not to mention the West Indies riding high after their own success, and India, who flummoxed Australia in a T20 series at home last summer. “It is important that we get our 50-over game plan really down pat,” notes Lanning of the mission ahead between now and next July.
Greater awareness of overseas threats is explained by the women’s cricket world getting smaller as it gets bigger. Over the last year in addition to the WBBL a comparable domestic competition – a six team T20 ‘super league’ – has emerged in England. The two tournaments have created what amounts to a quasi-professional circuit, showcasing elite women from across the cricket world. Much like the men, it means the best play the best far more now than they ever have before.
At home, the WBBL’s footprint is slated to grow in the afterglow of season one, no better evidenced by Channel Ten’s main station investing in the broadcast of 12 live games, including four fixtures on the 10-11 December opening weekend. “There’s no doubt the WBBL is going to be really exciting” says Lanning, and after missing the inaugural UK hit out due to a shoulder injury, she now sees herself crossing back and forth between the two leagues for the medium term. “It is more and more a year-round thing now. We want to play more cricket so it is great that there are more opportunities to play. That’s a great thing about women’s cricket, it is really moving forward.”
It is also moving fast in terms of pay. Lanning until recently publicly declared herself a “semi-professional,” by contrast to her England competitors who have since 2014 had full-time contracts. But now, owing to Cricket Australia this year expanding their payment pool, Southern Stars players can now earn up to $65,000 per year, alongside additional remuneration for the WBBL and marketing bonuses. The result: “I probably consider myself to be professional,” Lanning says, adding that while she doesn’t think that is yet the case for all of her colleagues, it isn’t far off either. “We’re in a very good spot right now.”
With Australia’s men in the midst of what has the potential to be their worst summer in current memory, this creates a new opportunity for Lanning’s side nurture new affection and attention and eyeballs. And she knows it. “Australia loves teams that win,” says Lanning. They sure do. And it helps when they’re led by out by best.
