Stumped
Can The Hundred grow without IPL investment?
We hear from Venky Mysore who is the Managing Director of the Kolkata Knight Riders. He shares whether he would be interested in buying a stake in a Hundred team and whether players should be allowed to leave their franchise early.
Alison Mitchell, Jim Maxwell and Charu Sharma celebrate the efforts member nations are making to grow Cricket in emerging nations....
This year's ICC Development Award winners have been announced and the UAE were awarded ICC Associate Member Women's performance of the Year for their displays at the T20 World Cup Asia Qualifier in Kuala Lumpa. We are joined by their captain Esha Oza who tells us what the award means to them.
Plus we discuss England women's triumphs after winning all thirteen matches they have played at home during their international Summer.
Photo: Kolkata Knight Riders' players celebrate with the trophy after winning the Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 final cricket match against Sunrisers Hyderabad at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai on May 26, 2024. (Credit: AFP via Getty Images)
- Duration:
- 38m
- Broadcast on:
- 18 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
Welcome to Stumped, a podcast that talks about cricket. Yep, that's about it. Cricket! How to play it, watch it, and love it, whether you're in England, India, Australia, and everywhere in between. Share it, review it, and rate it, please. Podcasts from the BBC World Service are supported by advertising. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous to your contracts, they said, "What the f*ck are you talking about? You insane Hollywood f*ck." So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month slows. Full turns at mintmobile.com. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. We all know what that music means. It's time for the Olympics in Paris. I'm Matt Rogers, and I'm Belling Yang. And we're doing an Olympics podcast? Yeah. We're hosting the two guys' Five Rings podcast. Watch every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympics beginning July 26th on NBC and Peacock. And for the first time, you can stream the 2024 Paris Games on the iHeartRadio app. And listen to two guys' Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the BBC World Service, in association with ABC and Ha'Kashvani, this is Stumped. Hello, and welcome to Stumped, your intercontinental hit of news features and debate from the quirky world of cricket. I'm Alison Mitchell in London, where the nation is still recovering from another disappointment in a major football final of the course for England men. Well, they got there. They at least got there. It's now all about the fallout. Who's going to replace Gareth Southgate as manager? But we're a cricket program. And so England's men are beginning life without James Anderson of the Test match at Trimbridge this week. They dispatched to the West Indies very quickly in James Anderson's last game at Lords, which actually meant that I was able to go to my cousin's birthday party on Saturday night without worrying about going back to work on Sunday. So there was certainly a silver lining on top of a quick test match finish. But yeah, it's farewell to Jimmy Anderson. Well, let's have the West Indies that can get at least to four days in a test match at Trimbridge. But Jim Maxwell for the ABC here in Sydney, and I do have some sad news to report because a number of you in the world of cricket will know of David Morrow who worked for the ABC for a long time. And sadly, he passed away on Wednesday after a battle with brain cancer, which unfortunately from diagnosis, took him away from us after just six, seven months. So David Morrow, a very versatile broadcaster, did a lot of cricket. And a lot of those around the country, particularly his colleagues, and sending out condolences to family and friends on his passing. Yeah, well, sorry to hear about David. Jim, this is Charlie Sharma for Akash Bani. I'm glad to be back home in Bangalore and all the news and top of the cricket here. Well, that two aspects, one of course, India after suffering that reversal in the first T20 against Zimbabwe, of course, came back very strongly. That was a no contest. A bit like what's going on in England right now and the West Indies. And the other bit of news is concerning our new coaching system, Gautan Compir, seems to be, of course, the one who is going to take care of the Indian cricket team. But he's not having much luck with his assistants or lieutenants. But we'll see how all of that ends up pretty soon, because they need to, of course, announce the new coaching setup. Like the thoughts about David, Jim, absolutely, and good to see you too, Cherry as well. Now, coming up on this week's show, we're going to be talking about England's women going on an unbeaten run, a winning run. They have won every single match they have played this summer. That is to come. We're going to start this week by celebrating the efforts to grow cricket in emerging nations and marking some of the most outstanding performances by associate countries. The ICC announced their annual development awards this week. And amongst the winners, Mexico were credited with introducing cricket into prisons. And the Netherlands men's team were recognized for their performances in Zimbabwe in their 50 over World Cup qualifying campaign and in the tournaments itself in 2023, where you remember they memorably beat both South Africa and Bangladesh at the World Cup in India. The UAE were awarded ICC associate member women's performance of the year for their achievements at the T20 World Cup Asia qualifier in Kuala Lumpur. They went on a run which saw them record wins over the hosts Qatar, Bahrain, Hong Kong and Thailand. And the UAE captain, Isha Oza is currently in Sri Lanka for the Asia Cup. And she joins us on stunt. Isha, fabulous to see you. First of all, what does it mean to you to win this particular award? It's a great thing. It's a great event for the entire community of cricket in UAE. I think ECB played a major role in helping us achieve all those results that we did. And I think the hard work they put in, the hard work we put in. So I'm getting the result and an award is the best way to get noticed of doing well. Yeah, it's fabulous recognition. I mean, narrowly missed out on qualifying for the 2024, the T20 World Cup after being beaten by Sri Lanka in that qualifying tournament. And that must have felt crushing at the time. But what did you take from it? Yeah, so I think the first few days, it's pretty hard to take it, especially when it gets so close. It's hard to take a loss that close. But I think one thing that we learned from that tournament is, I think our entire squad believes that we're able to do something big as well. So playing against teams like Sri Lanka, we got so close to them. We were close to maybe even knocking them out of the world cup and taking their place instead. If you just believe in yourself, you do the small things right. And if it's your day, it's the T20 cricket. Anything can go your way. Asia, Jim Maxwell for the ABC and Sydney. Well done. Wonderful to have the recognition now. Just a bit about yourself. You were born in India. You moved to the UAE. Can you tell us a little bit more about your experience there and the state of women's cricket in the UAE? So yeah, so I moved to UAE pretty early. I was eight months old when I moved to UAE. And since then, I've stayed in Dubai. So it's pretty much my home. And yeah, so I actually took a cricket only when I was 15. So before that, I used to play football in school. And I think the first ever cricket game I've watched was the 2011 World Cup Finals. And like just watching MS Dhoni hit that six, that was something pretty different to see. And then when I used to go to Mumbai during my holidays, I used to play cricket with my cousins. They used to go down to play gully cricket. So like, I just enjoyed when I used to do that. So when I came back to Dubai, I joined an academy and I started learning the sport as well. And that was way back in 2013. And during that time, we didn't play T20 internationals. It was just T20s against Gulf countries. But over the years, we've gotten T20I status that was in 2018. We've played the, we've won Asia qualifier. We've won them twice. And we've even been to the global qualifiers right now. And with the latest one, we've come up to the semi-final. So I think cricket, women's cricket in UAE is really progressing. You have a pretty strong personal record, three international T20 centuries. Second fastest woman to reach 1,000 T20 runs in the international cricket. So what do you put that down? Is it hard work, something in your dreams? Does some talent there? What is it? I think nothing in the genes, all the hard work. I think hard work does pay off the harder you work, the better results you get. And yeah, there's no substitute for hard work. Just keep working hard, have, just keep dreaming, big working hard, keep working towards your goals. And eventually, you'll get that. Hi, you showed us a Charu Sharma, I'm in Bangalore right now. I was actually in Dubai when your T20 World Cup qualifiers were going on. And I was doing a lot of work with Charlie, but your former UAE women's captain. And we were following your progress very closely. Well, I mean, sad about the T20 World Cup, but congratulations to you, your team, and of course, the Emirates cricket board and all that he has achieved. And you guys, the women might actually in the UAE be doing best at the men at this point of time, we'll see. But the coach of the women's team currently is Emma Draza, who was the captain of the men's UAE team. And what kind of influence what's his contribution to the development, recent development of your game? So one thing is he's been following the women's game since quite a time. So ever since he was a player as well, he used to come down to our training sessions. He used to have a chat with us about the game. He used to come bold to us as well. And so stuff like that. So he knows he's seen our team progress. And now that he's become our coach, he has, he's played a lot of international cricket. And he's watched a lot of women's games as well. So he can guide us from both ways, like an overall cricketing perspective, as well as a women's cricket perspective. So that's really helped us. I think it's helped us grow our game and make it more T20 friendly. I can say from what we used to play. Also, you're currently in Sri Lanka now at the Asia Cup. And it's about to get underway. And in your group, you do have India, Pakistan and Nepal. And how does it feel now going against at least a couple of the giants of the women's game? I think the Sri Lanka game, that's really important coming up to the tournament because that game actually helped us believe that these tournaments were not just here to participate. We're here to compete. And I think the World Cup qualifier semi-finals we competed. We just didn't play the game just like that. So that gives us a big boost. I think all players are starting to believe a lot more that any upset is possible. Maybe we may be underdogs. But you never know if it's our day, we can come out on the winning side as well. Each of these conversations largely about T20 because of the award and the performance that qualifying tournament. But what about the 2026 ODI World Cup? Is that very much on your radar? Who are going to be your biggest challenges to getting through to actually feature there? Do you believe he can? I think we can. We're still in the hunt for ODI status. We haven't played ODI still now. And I think we're working towards it. We're getting better and better at the T20 format. And I think that will eventually help us get our ODI status as well. I think tournaments like these year checkup where we've played giants of the region. I think if we do well here, they'll automatically, like, I mean, people who automatically start feeling that maybe we're good enough to play even ODI's. And yeah, we're working towards it. We're going to I think as soon as the issue gets over, we're going to start working on our ODI games as well. So just hoping we get the ODI status soon as well. Are you given any indication about what you need to do as a team to gain ODI status? So as per what I understand, I think if we do win against the destination, that does help the cause in T20. Yeah, that's yes. So that's what I know for now. And I think we've been having qualifiers for the T20 Asian region qualifiers and stuff, but I don't think we've had any for the ODI's. It's just that a few teams have been given the status. I think Thailand, Scotland, they all have ODI status. So yeah, the Netherlands. So yeah, just pushing towards it now. Oh, we wish you best of luck with that. That will certainly be another big milestone on the journey for the UAE women. Esha, congratulations on winning the award that you have for the ICC Development Awards and wish you all the best of luck for the time in Sri Lanka just now. Thank you. Thank you so much. As Esha Ozha, captain of the UAE with us. From the BBC World Service, this is dumped on ABC and a pushback. Now on last week's show, we spoke about an event called World Cricket Connects, which saw some of the most influential voices in the world of cricket get together at Lords to analyze the game and talk about the future. Well, the future of test cricket was discussed, but what about a different format of the game? The 100. Well, it's played only in England and Wales, and the fourth edition of the tournament gets underway next week. It's been owned and operated by the ECB in the county since its conception. And the plan is now to sell stakes in ownership of the eight teams later this year. Our co-cata night riders managing director Venki Mysore was at World Cricket Connect at Lords. He was asked if KKR would be interested in expanding their portfolio further, and if they would want to buy a stake in one of the 100 teams. In principal thought processes, yes, we'd be keen. We want to explore this. We want to understand it. Different counties have come and spoken with us as well, without any specifics. But we've enjoyed that. The fact that there's conversation because see the joint venture and that's going to be one of the biggest challenges here. I feel that whoever's coming in, this will be the new experience. And joint ventures all predicated on people. It's all people not financial. They have to understand each other. The chemistry has to be good, and it has to stand the test of time. Plus, a partful joint venture is legacy. You know, counties have been around for 100 bus years, 120 years. So, therefore, there's a lot of legacy, a lot of experience, good experience, good knowledge of the market, of how they run it. So, are you going to ask them to take a backseat and say, "Leave it to us." Would they be happy with that? If they told us that and say, "When should take a backseat?" "We're on it. We'll give you a return on investment." Would we be happy with that? Probably not. Because we're not looking to come in as a financial investor. We feel we know a thing or two about running franchises. We've done it for a long time. So, those are some of the challenges with it. So, as I said, devil is in the details. Let's see what comes out and then we'll figure. So, that's Venki Mysore, KKR's Managing Director. Remember, they won their third IPL title this year. So, they do know a thing or two about playing in competitions, winning competitions. Chari, you've been closer to franchise ownership than any of us, having been CEO of RCB right at the very beginning. Does what Venki Mysore is saying there about that joint ownership make sense to you? Well, there are several complications, but my time at RCB was not a fabulous memory, so let's not go there. We'll gloss over that. Yeah, thank you. But yes, it is rather complicated. Now, there are some kind of background bits here that I'd love to mention. One, the fact that the IPL is a very, very different kind of monster where there is so much now, everybody is so much in the black, that that's why they're investing in all sorts of other leagues, whether it's the Caribbean or South Africa or wherever else they get an opportunity, Sri Lanka elsewhere. So, for them, they know that only the IPL, being the kind of, well, juggernaut it is, is done for financial reasons. Yes, there are many other fallouts, but it's a very heavy financial model, and all the teams now, they might have taken time to break even, but now they're all very heavily in the black, and that's what's allowing them, all these investments in other teams around the world. England could be a little complicated, as Venki has tried to explain, that it's not just a question of putting some money as a joint venture with some county, because the teams in the IPL teams don't really need to do that. They are into ownership of a league team, not as a minority financial partner for some potential gain in the future. They don't need that. They now need leadership, and I don't think the counties will allow them that, because they're saying, no, we're the ones with the 120 years, you're the new kids on the block. If you want to give us some money, we're happy to take it, but I don't think the counties are going to let any new investor, IPL owner or otherwise, take leadership of these teams fundamentally. Why are teams that now run the 100, looking for investment in partners? Do they not see enough value for themselves? Why seek other partners? And if there is value, well, take it all yourself. And also, why are we constantly looking at and discussing Indian/IPL team owners? Because, I mean, if it's independently viable and a good proposition, then there should be global interest to people coming from many other countries or the US who are looking into football as in soccer in the UK, where they don't really have that kind of a legacy. So, if the 100 is that potentially viable, there should be all sorts of interest from most small manners of those who invest in the world of sport, rather than just this current potential cash cow as they seem to be seen as the IPL team owners. The IPL team owners, I do have, as Venki was alluding to, and as I said, they do have the proven track record of running successful teams, don't they? Whereas, I suppose, if you look to an owner completely on the outside of cricket, there's no track record, there's a certain risk associated with that, isn't there? Well, yes, but I mean, in terms of running teams, as Venki also said, what's wrong with a 120-year legacy of the counties? They've been running it for years, years, but if there's new financials involved and new sources of revenue that are sought, well, that's not limited to IPL team owners, because they operate in a very narrow Indian scenario where, obviously, there's, as I keep famously saying in India, 95% or more of the revenues in sport in India are all channeled into cricket. But in terms of running teams, surely, those who run teams for 120 years, even though this is a separate little subset, 100, should be able to run a very successful, well-oiled team. They can run successful teams. Can they pay the players enough to attract the biggest players and keep them? And I think that's where the thinking of the external ownership, the greater commercialism, particularly the Indian owners, because then they will be contracting their players. As we see, if you're a KKR player, then you've got those potential opportunities in the teams around the world that are owned by KKR. And at the moment, the 100 just does not compete with, well, no league competes with the IPL, but every league will be jostling to try and make sure they can attract financially the best players and keep them. And keeping them is another question, actually, because Venky was also asked about players leaving their franchise teams early, which isn't issue, isn't it, that all leagues seem to have with players continually coming and going. And it happened to KKR, didn't it, just before the IPL final this year, with one of their top scorers Phil Salt, leaving to go and join up with England for international GT. So here's what Mysore had to say about that issue. That's always tough and that happens, especially when it happens, because we are in the tail end of the tournament, business end of it, but I understand why it happens. It's never easy, even it does, because it just suddenly changes the team combination. Same thing happened to Raj Samrad when Jost Butler left, at least they knew he was going though. I mean, he was going back for different reasons also, expecting the third child and what not. So they were very, they were told upfront, where it becomes difficult is we were not told that he would go back. He was completely available for the holes, he asked for the NOC that they had issued, but then maybe they were also influenced by how well he was doing that. So that's okay, you know. Because if you are signing players from England, if that happens in the future, not really. I think what it will do is we would want a lot more clarity on availability. See these things happen. It is not the first time of the last row. There have been times in the past when we were told before the auction that player availability is as follows. They let go back at this stage, they let it do. So if we knew it, then we would plan around it. Either not pick the player, it was availability as a factor. And some of the players were not picked from other countries because they said they have some conflicting commitments. So yeah, I mean, you don't want that unpredictability. That's reporter Luke Wilson home you heard with the question in there. So my source calling for more clarity around NOC. So just to explain to everyone, that stands for non-objection or no objection certificates, which players have to get from their country, from their national board in order to play an ICC sanctioned franchise leagues like the IPL, Big Bash 100, say 20, etc. So some clarity around that sounds reasonable. To my mind, Chari, I mean, a player on the fringe might suddenly suddenly make the national team or be called up as an unforeseen injury replacement, which makes it pretty hard for countries to give an NOC unless there is some flexibility because they don't particularly want to just count a player out of the reckoning for international call up completely, would they? Well, that's why I keep seeking for the right term to describe what the IPL is. I'm just calling it a juggernaut, but obviously it's a lot more than that, where the owners are now seeking virtually full control to have the cake eat to do everything. It was always a situation when the IPL teams know that, that the players from other countries cannot be well out upon as much as players from India, because they're given full leave, rain, or whatever to join the IPL teams. And players from other countries, especially the more powerful cricketing countries, will reserve the right to record players at short notice as England obviously thought of doing before the T20 World Cup in Australia, I must say, didn't because the Australian stayed back in the IPL in. So to an extent, you can talk about the players taking their own decisions, saying that I want to stay here, because this is where my breads being more better but better, no more buttered. But as long as they're playing for their countries, I think countries will want to reserve the right to have a late call on the availability of players, and they must be allowed that right, unless the world of cricket is going to say, well, IPL teams are number one in terms of priority, and they can release players or not. I don't think the cricket worlds reach that stage just yet. And of course, there are parallels in the world of football slash soccer, where I think players are still, of course, being asked to return to the national teams for national duty, and they have to leave the league teams. Do they have the right to say, no, I think they do return to their country. So this club versus country thing is an age-old debate, and we've talked about and stumped also for very long. But I don't think the IPL teams at this point of time can request players to not respond to the call of their country, even though it may be later not predetermined when they're picked at auctions. Yeah, and Jim, I guess that no objection certificate was brought in to give countries a degree of control, because actually they could, they could refuse a certificate completely, couldn't they? But that's where the player power sort of comes in, or at least the power of the league, with the money in players then saying, well, you're actually, if you don't grant me any certificate, you are limiting my ability to earn. But the idea of the NOC was to give the countries an element of control. Of course, I've noticed the other day when all the brainoids were getting together to chat about this, Pat Cummins threw out, reiterated what a lot of people have said, look, you just got to have a window somewhere during the course of the year, and that's it, okay? A window for international cricket, rather than a window for... No, window for franchises. I was thinking of my saying that should be a window for test cricket. Well, there may be, it may come to that, of course. I mean, we've now got the United States involved and Australian players wanting to go there and play franchise cricket, so where does it end? There's got to be some control from the home nations, as it were, from countries to be able to get access to their players. But as we're noticing with Pat Cummins and a few others with the Australian team, they're opting out of the Australia's next series coming up in a couple of months against Scotland and England. So it's all about the balance, particularly as you get a little bit older about making sure you've got some candle wax to burn when it's required, not all the time. It's just not possible. So there's a lot of wheeling and dealing around this to try and get it right. But I would imagine that the commercial started this when the argument somewhere along the line. Well, this is something that the Pakistan Cricket Board are looking at at the moment, aren't they? Because there's a bit of a thing coming up there that it's being reported that the PCB are likely to withhold NOCs to a number of their all-format players, so that's in their bid to try and manage workload, because they've got a lot of international bilateral cricket coming up from October to May. I was looking at their schedule. They've got three tests against England at home in October, then they've got white ball series in Australia's in Barbuy South Africa, test series in South Africa, test series against West Indies, home tri-series, then the Champions Trophy. It feels, I mean, it'd be interesting to see how that plays out with the players and their player power, and it's with the PCB if they, if they, you know, try to stop that the player's going to franchise leagues. But at some point, you wonder whether it will become, you know, players playing franchise leagues, players less available for bilateral series, and everything being managed just up until that next World Cup event, the next T20 event, the next Champions Trophy event. Well, Alison, all will not be lost, because I do think cricket is now going through its growth bangs, and they need to, of course, understand how to handle all of this, because, you know, life can often be some kind of a rubber band, where if you stretch a bit, you're okay, you, and if you try and pull a little too hard, then the band might break, and that's the birthplace of rebellion. So the world of cricket, the ICC, all the rest of the boards need to probably discuss a lot about where are we going with all of this, because if we keep withholding players, they are bound to break and say, well, enough. So cricket just has to grow up and realize where it's all headed and plan smoothly, rather than cross-swords, because that might, you know, create a huge issue. You want really more countries to experience that feeling India did when they win a World Trophy, the emotion, the feeling of doing that for your country, and as a band of players who have come through that journey, the emotion and the sentiment in that far outweighs a money aspect. But only if you're in a position where you can afford for that to outweigh, and that's where the inequality comes. This is Stumped from the BBC World Tour. "Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com/switch, or whatever you're ready. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month, new customers on first three month plan only, taxes and fees extra, speed slower above 40 gigabytes of CDTails. We all know what that music means. It's time for the Olympics in Paris. I'm Matt Rogers, and I'm Bowen Yang. And we're doing an Olympics podcast? Yeah, we're hosting the two guys five rings podcast. Watch every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympics beginning July 26 on NBC and Peacock. And for the first time, you can stream the 2024 Paris Games on the iHeartRadio app and listen to two guys five rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This I'm Alison Mitchell. And if you've missed anything from stump them, why not download and subscribe to the podcast via your usual podcast provider. And you can check us out on YouTube as well. Head to the BBC World Service YouTube channel. On last week's show, we were joined by West Indies legend Brian Lara, who told us that no amounts of money can help solve test cricket in the West Indies. Okay, money is there. That's a physical thing where you hand over money and how you spend it is very, very important. I don't know if you put 100 million, 200 million into the West Indies bank account. Is it going to change the way we play the game? I'm not sure. You know, the MCC or whoever discussing it and trying to find solutions. I think the West Indies cricket board number one drop is to bring the life back into the people of the Caribbean and let them understand what test cricket is all about. From the BBC World Service, this is stumped on ABC and Puff Hush money. Finally this week, England's women have broken their own record and won all 13 matches they've played at home this summer. Previously, the record was 12, so it's quite a feat for them. They finished the summer, the international summer, that is, with a 5-0 T20 series win over New Zealand, having won the ODI series and they also beat Pakistan earlier in the summer as well. They're going to the domestic 100 competition now and then they'll all get back together again to travel to Ireland for a white ball series in September before then getting out to Bangladesh for the T20 World Cup. It's quite a top-loaded summer for England. We've been used to the women playing a lot of their internationals in September but all over in July for them, it's a long time now till the World Cup with only this series against Ireland to come. Yes, it's a moot point though about the competitiveness of the English summer. Men and women, it seems like it's all going to go one way. The men are playing in West Indies who are marginal at best and then Sri Lanka, my god, they're worse. Women are having a pretty good run because they're playing some very good cricket that needs to be said. It's not a summer that's glowing like an Asha series or a visit of India to England, is it? I'm sure it was some relief to a lot of people that England got to the final of a football competition recently. Well, Wimbledon's been going on as well and that was pretty exciting. Very exciting. I have to ask you what these victories have meant to budding women cricketers in the UK because much as we may say that the competition wasn't really very exciting in terms of levels of their play but can you see a visible change in the number of young girls taking to the game because England cricket, women's cricket is doing really well. There's no doubt about it. Are the numbers rising? Is there more support commercially or otherwise? I mean, yeah, I don't have numbers to hand. I don't think you wasn't ready to be asked about numbers and figures of participants and so on but yeah, the overall trend is a healthy one certainly and the 100 has given amazing visibility to the women's game and the number of internationals that are on television as well. I mean, the last T20 was live on BBC2 as well. So there's the visibility aspect is certainly what creates that role model piece of inspiring more and more youngsters who just want to pick up her bat and have those England players as their heroes. In fact, I was playing cricket in the park with my niece the other day. He's 10 years old and she had one of her school friends there who was a young lad and I said to him, "Oh, who's your favourite cricketer?" Without hesitation, he just said, "That's sort of a brunch pretty cool and that's coming from a lad." So that role model aspect really cuts through and kids are growing up just with role models being girls and boys, men and women sort of regardless. So far as the level of competition England have had, I think Heather Knight, the England captain has been a little bit sore maybe about people constantly looking and saying, "Well, Pakistan went a strong side and New Zealand have been really poor this summer and New Zealand have been poor at times and quite poor, but England also have been playing good cricket." So I think Heather Knight wants a bit more credit for the level of cricket that they have been playing and they're building up towards Bangladesh. They've really mixed things up through this whole series actually notably number of team changes all the time to get them used to what different circumstances might be thrown at them when they do get to Bangladesh. They've got this option of playing four spinners which they've played at times in the summer. You know, Sophie Eccleston, number one spinner in the world. Sarah Glenn is right up there. Charlie Dean, off spinner who's really got a tremendous cricketing brain. I think she could have a really impactful tournament in Bangladesh and then they also have left arm spinner and Lindsey Smith who they've sometimes will play in the power play when they want to contain a team but also she keeps the stumps in play. So it's that sort of attacking sense as well. So I think they're in a pretty good spot when they get to Bangladesh. But I mean, Charlie, the conditions there are going to be quite different aren't they? So that's the additional challenge for England. Yeah, well, I do remember teams basing themselves in the Middle East before competitions in the South Asia as we call it to be able to get a sense of the conditions. So I wonder if the winning team will allow themselves that privilege of going to perhaps Dubai and spending a couple of weeks and just getting more used to it rather than the obviously pretty conditions. Yeah, well, that's a little dangerous then for South Asian conditions. But I'm sure there'll be time, I think, for a small camp somewhere in South Asian conditions. We'll see. Yeah, we certainly will. I mean, as far as test cricket goes, Jim, there's been sort of some questions, hasn't there, about whether a test match could have been played at Lord's because notably the T20 that was played at Lord's. Now, England just haven't historically played very much cricket at the home of cricket at Lord's. So it always feels significant when the England team play there. I guess at the moment, in recent years, the 100 team London spirit is Lord's base. So actually, we see women's cricket played at Lord's. It feels quite a lot, but less so the England team. And then, of course, it brings inevitable questions about, well, when is a test match going to be played there? And it couldn't have happened this summer with Pakistan and New Zealand because they just don't play test cricket, do they? It's still very limited to England, Australia and England will have one in South Africa before going over to the ashes. But yeah, it's not a growth area or an area of focus for any countries outside of England, India and South Africa at the moment. It's not that the West Indies couldn't get the lunch on the third day just recently. So I'm sure that some of these women's teams, even though they're on the fringes of test cricket, as the one off at least could give it a crack and should be given the opportunity. But yeah, it's about how it fits. And it's a big thing in Australia. You'll notice when you come back this summer, women more and more looking to have given their status here, the Australian women's team, they should be getting the MCG, the SEG, the test match grounds to play their big games more often. And it's a pretty strong argument when you look at the way they play their cricket and the crowds they pull. It's the crowds as an end. Of course, the ashes test is being staged at the MCG for the first time, which will be incredible. England have been told that they will have a test match at Lords, I believe 2026 is the earliest that that could happen. So I haven't looked ahead in the fixtures to know if that's then an ashes touring year, which team that could possibly be. But of course, you've got to have the right summer for the right team touring to stage a test match. But that is what has been said to them by Richard Thompson, the ECB chair. So watch this space and there will be a women's test match staged at Lords. Well, that is all we've got time for on this week's Stumped. My thanks to Jim Maxwell and Cherisham and to all of you for listening. And we'll see you again next week. Until then, bye for now. Stumped is a BBC Sport Production for the BBC World Service in association with ABC and Akash Vani. We all know what that music means. It's time for the Olympics in Paris. I'm Matt Rogers and I'm Bowen Yang and we're doing an Olympics podcast. Yeah, we're hosting the two guys five rings podcast. Watch every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympics beginning July 26th on NBC and Peacock. And for the first time, you can stream the 2024 Paris Games on the iHeartRadio app and listen to two guys five rings on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. you you. [BLANK_AUDIO]