Women's cricket looks to future with new-style event in Dubai

women's cricket tournament grouping established stars with emerging-nation players starts this week as the sport looks to expand globally and outgrow its reliance on the men's game. The FairBreak Invitational, featuring England captain Heather Knight, West Indies skipper Stafanie Taylor and Pakistan's Sana Mir, opens on Wednesday accompanied by calls for better funding for the sport. Women's cricket has emerged as a marketing hit in recent years with international finals played at sold-out stadiums, including a record 86,000-plus at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the T20 World Cup decider in March 2020.

Progress was halted by the pandemic but the sport bounced back with a successful World Cup in New Zealand, Australia beating Knight's England at a sold-out Hagley Oval last month. Knight, whose Barmy Army-sponsored FairBreak team includes players from Vanuatu and Rwanda, said it was time that women's cricket ended its financial reliance on the men's game. "I think there are discrepancies and certain things in the women's game," she told journalists at Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Monday.

"Sometimes the funding for example relies on the men's game which I think needs to change. "So I think this (tournament) is all about trying to help those associate nations, trying to grow the game globally." Women's cricket, much like the colonialism-rooted men's game, is heavily weighted towards a small group of well-funded countries that dominate international competition. Australia have won seven World Cup titles, followed by England with four.