The popularity of the women’s Hundred has taken everyone by surprise and the record-breaking crowds look like seriously challenging those of women’s football
![Why the Hundred double headers have boosted women’s game | Raf Nicholson](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5e05403be792335bc2ce059e4deda378452954ae/0_266_5184_3110/master/5184.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=093d7ce8e69d2c426f1d8e793bb79846)
A few years ago I wrote a piece on “double-header” matches – the phenomenon whereby a women’s match is played directly before a men’s match in an effort to increase crowd sizes for the
Women. The headline will give you an idea of my view: “Double headers are the future – but they stink”.
When I found out, therefore, that the inaugural edition of the
England and Wales
Cricket Board’s new competition, the Hundred, would be played almost entirely as double headers, my heart sank. I envisaged the women’s matches relegated to “warm-up” status; press boxes filled with retrograde journalists who only bothered to turn up to cover the men; female players being hurried along by the umpires to make way for the day’s “main event”; crowds who arrived to watch the men. In the 10 years I have been covering women’s cricket, these have all been regular occurrences at double headers in England and around the world.