Katherine Brunt will not be cowed despite England’s World Cup toils

The latest edition of the Indian Premier League kicks off this weekend. It poses some interesting questions. The IPL is gripping, high-grade stuff. Like me you may well end up watching every second of it, even as you complain loudly about the fact that, oh look, you’re watching every second of it.

But starting again? Really? Was there an extended period in the last two years where you could say with any real certainty that the IPL had actually stopped? Perhaps in future it might be easier to assume, unless specifically stated otherwise, that the IPL is still going on. That somewhere in the rolling T20 metaverse the commentator who shouts “wow!” at everything is shouting “wow!” as a man in a shirt daubed with cement manufacturers flat-bats one over cover, that this is simply the engine around which every other moving part rotates now.

But it still feels a week too early. England’s men are still playing a Test match. There’s football happening, because football must always happen. But my main objection to this sudden blotting out of the cricketing sun is that the 50-over Women’s World Cup in New Zealand is in danger of being overshadowed just as it threatens to bubble up into a genuinely gripping endgame.

It has been an absorbing tournament so far, simmering away, gathering depth and layers, and deserving of a free run in its final week. The weekend will see the semi-finalists culled. From the start of next week one of four contenders, South Africa, West Indies, India and England, will have the chance to create a genuine story by beating Australia, who are simply much better than everyone else right now, a team playing with a kind of light around them.

It has been an intriguing tournament for England, and beyond that for